Naruto: Journey to the End
by Nolan Void
Summary: What if Minato killed Obito during the Kyuubi attack? What would Naruto's world and life be like without a group of the most powerful missing-nins hunting him down? Smarter/Stronger/Grounded Naruto. Pairings undecided.
1. Discovery

Disclaimer: I don't own Naruto.

A/N: This premise is basically just a mash up of "What if Minato killed Obito?" and "Naruto finds out about his heritage earlier". Things probably won't start going off the rails until after the Chunin Exams, but I'll try to exclude and/or make canon things more interesting when I address them.

Sex will be fairly casual in this Narutoverse, as is wont to happen with dangerous professions, but I'm not sure on any romantic subplots yet. I also am still on the fence for full lemons. Guess we'll see.

Not a lot of action in this chapter, but it lays the foundation for the rest of the story.

Enjoy.

"Speaking."

_Naruto's thoughts._

_**Kyuubi's**_**_ thoughts_.****  
**

* * *

The cacophony caused by a group of metal trash cans smashing together and spilling their contents in the alley mattered to only two of the people who heard it.

The first was the small ten year old boy who stumbled and crashed through the cans. Awkwardly, he raised himself from the morass of nearly week old trash. Standing slowly, his left arm shot back to cradle his right. Blood streamed from the hole in his shoulder, the most recent tear in his jump suit doing nothing to stop the garbage from mixing with his wound. He rested his head against the wooden wall of the alley, compressing the remaining spike of blond hair into the matted mess on his head, and tried to get his ragged breathing under control.

A scrabbling noise from a nearby roof pushed him to struggle drunkenly toward the mouth of the alley. Fear was plastered across his usually tanned face. The three identical, whisker-like marks on each of his cheeks stood out even more on his unusually pale face. Glazed blue eyes darted back and forth as he made his way out to the street.

His foot caught a divot, and he stumbled out into the street futilely trying to keep his balance. A pained scream tore its way out of his throat as his bloodied shoulder slammed into a manor gate, smearing it with red. He was taken over by weightlessness before the black at the edges of his vision joined together and he succumbed.

Takeru Ichimaru had a grin stretched across his face as he jumped from roof to roof after his quarry. He was twenty and had made chunin a few years ago. During that time, he managed to save up a nice little nest egg; one that he'd used to ensure that he could get his revenge on the thing that killed his parents ten years ago. Physical attacks on the Kyuubi were few and far between after the first civilian mob had died from a combination of fire jutsu and public execution. As far as he knew, his attack would be the third if that poor civilian attempt wasn't included.

An enormous racket sounded from an alley a few streets in front of him. His grin stretched wider—he doubted very much that anyone else was hanging around in alleys at three in the morning. He struck out toward his target without fear of recompense. It had happened that he knew the ANBU that was supposed to be watching the boy tonight, the ANBU he had convinced to take a multi-hour break with some coaxing and his nest egg. The only thing he couldn't do was kill it; that suited him just fine, it should suffer like he did after all.

One roof away, his foot landed on accrued bird droppings, which lead to something very similar to a tap dance as he tried to reestablish his footing. After a minute his stance was solid enough to jump to the roof adjacent to the alleyway. The lack of orange by the trash cans brought a scowl to his face. His eyes traced the blood out of the alley and toward a street. No trace of orange on that street either.

A deepened scowl gave way to a sigh and small smile. The hole that he'd put in the thing's shoulder and the other smaller cuts would make sure it bled to death in a few hours if it didn't get medical attention. He only had another half hour in his window of activity. Oh well, they couldn't blame him for that thing dying on the ANBU's watch could they? No trace of his involvement was left as he roof hopped back to his apartment.

* * *

Naruto cracked open his eyes and tried to push himself up, only for his arm to fall out from under him. The memories flooded back easily, and he quickly became confused. His shoulder was sore and stiff, but there hadn't been a sharp lance of pain like he'd expected. Using his left arm, he managed to flip himself onto his back and immediately regretted it as his eyelids fused back together trying to escape the harsh glare from the sun.

After a few minutes of letting the spots in his eyes settle down, he hesitantly propped himself up with his left arm and checked the hole in his shoulder. _It's completely gone. Now that I look, so are all my other injuries._ His body screamed in protest as he slowly levered himself to his feet. Why did it feel like he'd been hauling boulders around all day?

As he came to his senses, he turned in a circle to attempt to puzzle out where he was. He'd left a bloody smear directly in front of a large two story house. The building was easily a hundred feet across. Low hedges surrounded the small attached porch, and unobtrusive plants and flowers were placed sparingly around the area. Each decorative plant in the front yard was immaculately trimmed, as was the grass. An ornate wrought iron gate sat in the ten foot wall that appeared to surround the property.

_This place looks pretty high class. I'd better get out of here before I get in trouble._ His face worked itself into a frown. _And then I can try and remember how I got in here in the first place._ Walking toward the gate, he barely noticed how his muscles were no longer aching near as much as they had been when he woke.

His hand wrapped around the cool metal of the gate. He pulled sharply on the black gate, but only succeeded in launching himself forward. It hadn't budged or even rattled for that matter. Another yank did the exact same thing the first had. The gate was so frustrating, he just wanted to get home, have a cup or six of instant ramen, and go to sleep.

_Wait._ He peered up at the sun's position. _It was dark before I passed out, and now it's around lunch time._ Could he really have just laid in someone else's yard for that long without them noticing? His vote was for no, so that meant that he was probably alone in a random person's estate. A grunt of frustration temporarily pierced the silence of the grounds. _So, I'm stuck in a random compound, that I can't leave, while I'm recovering from being hunted by another ninja. Awesome._

His stomach growled fiercely before he asked the empty compound, "They wouldn't mind if I took a little food would they?" He started walking toward the front door. "I could always pay them back, and even if they were super angry, we could always just go talk to the Old Man." Assured by his own ramblings he only faltered slightly as he reached out to open the door. His eyes widened as the polished, wooden door opened before he had a chance to touch the knob.

Edging around the door as he stepped inside landed him in a conservative but homey foyer. The earthen brown walls made half a hexagon, with a glass door leading into the rest of the house. Two dark wood end tables sat in either corner of the room, along with two matching coat racks. Both tables were clear if you didn't count the layer of dust.

The living room beyond the glass door was inviting and warm. Its walls carried the brown from the foyer, but the wall that the fireplace sat on was painted a deep burgundy. A couch and several comfortable looking chairs dominated the room. Apart from them were only a few dead plants and a large cabinet opposite the couch. Pictures lined the mantle of the fireplace, but another growl from his stomach drew him away from any further inspection for the moment.

Tile flooring took over for carpet through an doorway to his right. _When in doubt, follow the easily cleanable surfaces._ The kitchen was bright and white, incredibly white. Every surface was either white or pale—it was kind of disconcerting really. _Whatever. Like I'm in any position to be criticizing someone's choice of color scheme._ Unfortunately, the fridge was completely empty, and all the cupboards yielded were several rolled up scrolls.

Unrolling a scroll revealed odd little designs on the inside. They seemed to be set up in a grid pattern. The first six were inside of a box that was labeled apples. _Is this one of those thingies the Old Man showed me how to use? Err, what was it?_ After a minute he finally remembered the answer: chakra. He pushed a small amount into the first apple symbol, and a large stack of green apples appeared in a poof of smoke. _That has to be at least twenty pounds worth._ Apples weren't something he was particularly fond of, but he had to eat them now. There was no telling when the people would get back, and he didn't have any idea on how to put them back in the symbol.

Five apples became cores within minutes. With his hunger partially sated, the cogs of caution started to turn once again. _I should really make sure no one else is here. I wouldn't be very happy if I just found some random person in my house. People dislike me enough already._ The grimace slowly disappeared as he made his way back through the living area and up the stairs with an apple. A long hallway, with rooms branching off to either side, stretched out before him.

"Uh, hello?" he called. "Anyone?" The only room with an open door was the one at the end of the hall. Well, it wasn't like he was _really_ intruding if the door was already open, right? Cream colored walls and expensive looking wooden floors carried him to, what appeared to be, a study. Shelves filled with scrolls and books lined the walls. The only place that wasn't filled with shelving was the area where a desk was set off from the wall.

_Coool..._ Naruto wandered around, until he realized there was an open letter on the desk. _Maybe I can find out who lives here._ His partially eaten apple fell to the floor as his eyes caught the addressee: Naruto. _That couldn't be me. Could it?_ Once the next sentence properly parsed he had a way to test it. Whoever it was, said that only family could open another closed envelope on the desk by putting some blood on a seal.

Shaking hands picked up an envelope sitting at a corner of the desk. He took a deep breath before flipping it over and taking in the funny design that he was sure was a seal. _Now or never!_ A lengthened incisor cut open a thumb that was swiped across the seal. After a second, the envelope flap detached. Breath he didn't realize he'd been holding rushed out, and he flopped into the chair behind the desk. He barely managed to hang onto the letter in his shock.

After a few minutes of slowly regressing shock, he pulled the folded pieces of paper out of the envelope and laid them lovingly on the desk. One of the pieces appeared to have more storage seals on it, but the other was another letter in the same handwriting as the first he found.

_Naruto,_

_If you are reading this letter, it means, as I feared, that I'm no longer around. It is my greatest hope that you are reading this with your mother, but just in case she has also passed on, let me explain a few things._

_The name of your father, and myself, is Minato Namikaze, the Fourth Hokage of the Leaf. If you are old enough to be in the academy, I assume you already know the more public details of my life. I just want you to know that even though you've yet to be born, I love you with all my heart. The two happiest days of my life are marrying your mother and finding out she was pregnant with you. Unfortunately, I am an orphan, so I do not have an entire library's worth of clan techniques to offer you. However, my notes on the Rasengan and Hiraishin are in the storage scroll with this letter. _

_Your mother's name was Kushina Uzumaki. She was an amazing woman; loud, brash, blunt, and with the biggest heart of any one I've ever met. She was the only one who was more excited than I was when we found out she was pregnant. In addition, she was an incredibly deadly kunoichi. She came from a place called Uzushiogakure, the homeland of the Uzumaki clan. Unlike me, she does have a few copies of hidden Uzumaki techniques in the storage scroll. I don't know what else to say, there are too many things to put down on paper. I'm sorry that she doesn't have a letter of her own, but this is simply a precaution. I didn't want to worry her while she was carrying you. _

_If you would like more details about the minutiae of our lives, I'm sure our journals are still sitting somewhere around the house. Oh, I also included rations in the kitchen, but if you're fifteen or older, the chakra keeping the food fresh has probably run out. _

_The storage scroll is labeled, but in it are copies of both of our prized jutsus. I also included a book of the history of Uzushiogakure. If you'd like to become a shinobi, your mother and I designed several training regiments for you that I've also included. Don't worry if you don't wish to become a ninja. Just remember: we both love you and would be proud of you no matter what you do._

_With much love,_

_Dad_

Tears streamed down his cheeks and onto the letter. He clutched the letter to his chest and rocked back and forth. _They loved me! My dad even went to this much work just in case, and he's the Fourth!_ The rapid fire thoughts flying through his mind didn't help in his shocked state. Each was becoming progressively harder to latch onto.

His sobbing trailed off after twenty minutes, and he finally remembered that there was another letter he had to read. Steeling himself, he hoped that it wouldn't be as emotionally draining as the first.

_Naruto,_

_If you've picked up this letter first, please read the other sealed envelope on the desk. You should be able to open it by applying a small amount of blood to the ink seal on the back. _

_I've got very little time. A masked man attacked your mother and I with our entourage while we were outside the village to birth you. The reason is that your mother was the second Jinchuriki of the Kyuubi. Mito Uzumaki, the First Hokage's wife, was the first. Basically your mother was the storage scroll and the Kyuubi was the item to seal. This was done to keep the Kyuubi in check as well as trying to harness its power. _

_He threatened you to get me away from your mother, when her seal was at its weakest. While I was securing you, he released the Kyuubi and your mother was killed. I'm so sorry that you're going to lose both of us tonight, but we have to do our duty as cruel as it seems. Don't worry about revenge, I killed him shortly after returning. He was controlling the Kyuubi with a Sharingan I've never seen before. _

_I'm leaving you this letter to apologize and state my intentions. The only way I know of to stop the Kyuubi involves sealing it. I'm planning on sealing it inside of you. The life Jinchuriki lead are generally not pretty, but with this gift, or curse however you wish to see it, you can become one of the greatest ninja in history. It should also offer you some amount of protection. I'm sorry if your life has been worse than it could have been so far, but I'm doing what I think is right. _

_Our home has a permanent genjustu around the walls that make it look like nothing is happening inside. You can safely train without being overseen. There's also a barrier so no one can leap over the walls. The only way in or out, other than the Hiraishin, is through the blood seal on the gate._

_Lessons I wish we could have taught you in person: a ninja's greatest weapon is deception. A hidden kunai kills as easily as a flashy jutsu. Don't advertise your skills unless you need to use them. Chakra control is important, really important in your case since your reserves will be enormous, practice every day. Learn the Shadow Clone Jutsu, the clones return their experiences and memories to you, use it to train your chakra control and learn jutsu. Always have a plan B and always keep something in reserve. The greatest Jinchuriki are partners with their demons. Kyuubi is a being of rage and malevolence, be careful when you're angry or it may try to influence you. A ninja is more than just a collection of jutsu, read books on everything, with the Shadow Clone Jutsu this should be easy. Be cunning, be unpredictable, be strategic, be responsible, never hesitate, and remember we will always love you. Don't feel obligated to the village for our sake, we only want you to be happy._

_**Learn sealing**. Your mother and I both excelled in this. I've included the notes for the seal holding the Kyuubi inside of you at the bottom of this letter. Sealing is incredibly versatile and powerful. My study is filled with books on different subjects and different jutsu, use them at your discretion. _

_Jiraiya of the Sannin was named as your godfather, and he is also one of the few seal masters Konoha will have left. Seek him out if you need help._

_I'm out of time. Again, remember that we both love you with all of our hearts, and I apologize from the bottom of mine for doing this. I know you'll make us proud._

_With love,_

_Dad_

The discolored, roughly circular spots and dark brown blotches scattered over the paper stared back at him as he read the letter again and again. His brain stuttered and then short circuited, plunging him into darkness.

Dripping water roused him into consciousness. Curiously, Naruto was already standing when he came to. He stood in calf deep water inside of an enormous tunnel. The walls were oddly textured and covered in piping that glowed softly. Fifteen feet in front of him stood a golden gate that blocked off the whole tunnel. What seemed to be a rectangular piece of paper held the gate together; it simply read "seal".

"Hello there Naruto," a deep but oddly melodic voice greeted from the shadows beyond the cage. A tall man emerged from the darkness and stopped a short way back from the bars. His red, slitted eyes were locked on Naruto, and his long, braided, deep orange hair was swaying minutely, as if in a small breeze. He appeared to be middle aged, but the gray sprouting from his temples belied a position at the older edge of that group. Simple black and red robes, much like he'd seen the Old Man wear, were wrapped around a lithe muscular frame.

"Kyuubi?" he wondered, with no small amount of trepidation in his voice.

"Kyuubi is a title, my name is Kurama," the human-shaped demon informed him.

"Okay Kurama," he began uncertainly, "where are we?"

"We are in your mind," Kurama gestured around flamboyantly. "I felt it prudent to reach out to you after what you've just learned."

"What I've learned..." Naruto trailed off. The reality and implications started crashing down around him again, threatening to throw him back into shock.

"Oi!" he shouted. "Not that I don't enjoy watching your mind being broken, but we have important things to discuss." Naruto raised his head, suitably anchored to reality for the moment. "You had an extra seal on you before last night. I had to corrode and dissolve it with my youki so that we would both survive the night."

"What?"

"Those fools, in an effort to keep my consciousness locked away, placed a second seal on you." Kurama had begun to pace behind the bars. "The seal also locked away three quarters of your chakra reserves, not to mention the fact that your Uzumaki regeneration was severely hampered by the lack of chakra."

"How-"

"The benefits of being sealed away into two Uzumaki seal masters," he informed with a lazy wave of a hand. "Even if there wasn't any direct contact, experience bled into me as water filters through the ground." His pacing halted, and he made eye contact with Naruto, "Child, the seal work was high level. The only person they'd trust to not create an imbalance with the seal your father put on you is your Godfather."

"What are you saying?" he questioned with a trembling voice. "The Old Man wouldn't do that to me, and he wouldn't order my Godfather to do it!" Kurama stayed silent as Naruto fumed. "But the Old Man had to know who my parents were, but he wouldn't go that far would he? How could he?" he continued in a much quieter voice. The information was there, at the very least he'd been lied to by the one person he thought had his best interests at heart. At worst the Old Man had tried to cripple him because he didn't trust him. "You're a demon, why should I believe you? Demons lie."

"We do, but the simple answer is: I don't have to lie to you." Naruto's face scrunched up in confusion. "You know what I want above anything?" A shake of the head was his response. "I've been sealed since the time of the First Hokage. I just want to not be a prisoner anymore. Is that really that much to ask?"

"No," Naruto replied immediately. The prison of Konoha was much larger than Kurama's, but he was stilled trapped there—and in decidedly unfortunate company.

"If I give you everything you ask for and more, we will become partners and friends. Undoubtedly, you will believe you can change my nature, and it may prove true. I don't know, I've never had this much contact with my container before." He resumed his pacing. "Anyway, you will eventually be skilled enough in sealing that you will be able to get me out of here without killing the both of us." He stopped in front of Naruto. "So you see, I have no need to lie. Gaining the needed ability in sealing will take several years. We will at least be sympathetic to the other's plight, probably empathetic."

"I see," Naruto frowned, deep in thought. "Could you give me the night to think Kurama?" Kurama gave a short nod. "Please pull me back in here some time tomorrow afternoon."

Naruto shook himself awake in the desk chair. Despite his near omnipresent smile and his disarmingly innocent confusion in abstract conversations, Naruto wasn't stupid. Did he know all of the words Kurama had used? No, but he got the gist of what he was saying. His biggest problem was that he nearly had to learn read on his own, and he didn't have the extra money to spend on books to expand his vocabulary and knowledge base.

What did he think of his parents? They both seemed awesome. The fact that people who didn't like him sometimes like the word "demon" slip out told him that the cause of their dislike was definitely his father's fault though, but his father said it was a gift. If Kurama really would help him, then there was no way he wouldn't become an awesome ninja, but was it worth it? He would still be an orphan even without Kurama inside of him, how much worse was his life than it could have been? It could have been worse, and it could have been better, he decided. Knowing his parents loved him and would be proud of him nearly made the tears come back.

The Old Man. He didn't know what to think of him anymore. Whenever he had a problem the Old Man had helped him, and he looked after him didn't he? Well, he was the son of a Hokage after all, even if the public didn't know. The Old Man and those Geezers would have to know about his parents, right? He would have to go see him. Maybe he could ask some sneaky but innocent questions to see how he reacted.

The gnawing fear in the pit of his stomach only grew as he snuck out of his family's compound and headed toward Hokage Tower. He had to find out! Could the person he thought cared about him the most have been lying to him for his entire life? Naruto was so deep in thought that he breezed right past the secretary's desk and walked into the Hokage's office without consciously realizing it.

"Naruto-kun, to what do I owe the pleasure today?" The wrinkled and liver spotted face behind the desk gave a grandfatherly smile. Hiruzen Sarutobi sat behind a wooden desk in the enormous wood paneled office. Stacks of paper occupied the top of his desk, but he was ignoring them in favor of tamping tobacco into his pipe. _Probably taking a break now that I'm here._

Naruto gave a hesitant smile and began, "Old Man, last night I got attacked by a ninja again." Hiruzen's eyes narrowed dangerously. "I don't really know what happened, but when I woke up my injuries were gone." He was quick to continue so it didn't get written off as a dream, "But I know it happened because my clothes are all torn up and stained." The Old Man's eyes scanned all the tears in his clothing and their accompanying stains, paying particular attention to his shoulder.

"Please tell me what happened," Hiruzen bid with a softer gaze. Naruto gave him the real story up until he was transported into his parent's house, just saying that he woke up in an alley a few hours ago. "Don't worry, my boy, I'll find out who did this to you," he assured with a warm smile.

"Why does everyone hate me so much Old Man? It isn't fair," he asked, with a trembling lip. _Too over the top?_

The Hokage turned to look toward Hokage Mountain through the plate glass windows before replying, "I don't know Naruto." Hiruzen sighed. "It's just bad luck that you were also born on the same day as the Kyuubi attack." _Well, I didn't catch anything there. Time to up the ante!_

"Have you found any record of my parents yet?"

"I'm afraid not. I'm beginning to think the records may truly have been destroyed during the Kyuubi attack," he fired off as if on reflex before turning his chair back around to face Naruto. On the outside Naruto only projected sadness, but on the inside he was smirking.

"Huh, but that means that they could be anyone. Someone amazing even!" he reasoned. The Hokage smiled and nodded, seemingly happy that the news hadn't brought Naruto down any further. "My dad could even be the Fourth Hokage!" Hiruzen sputtered slightly as his eyes widened. _ So he knew._ _Then there's no way he didn't know that I am a Jinchuriki._ "Later Old Man!"

* * *

Naruto sat at his Father's desk several hours after leaving the Hokage's office and out foxing the guard that he could always feel around him. Fresh tears marred his cheeks and the letters he'd reread after he'd come back. His Dad _had_ told him to become partners with Kurama if he could.

_Kurama, can you hear me?_

**_Indeed. Have you made a decision?_**

_I agree. We will work out the specifics while I'm asleep tonight._

**_'Til then Naruto._** He could practically feel the grin radiating from the fox.

* * *

A/N: First chapter done. We'll be getting into more action next time.


	2. Reassertion

Disclaimer: I don't own Naruto

A/N: There's some salty language near the end of this chapter. You've been warned.

Enjoy.

"Talking."

_Naruto's thoughts._

_**Kyuubi's**** thoughts.**  
_

* * *

_Three Years Later..._

Naruto sat in the back corner of the classroom in his slightly upgraded orange jumpsuit with an idiotic smile plastered across his face. Today was when he'd find out his team assignments. Technically, he should have graduated when he was eleven, because the Old Man had enrolled him two years early so he could get a stipend. Both he and Kurama had agreed however, that taking the extra time to train and absorb all the material in his family's home would be beneficial.

He could probably consistently defeat chunin opponents, but once you worked your way up to jonin it was a crap shoot. All of his skills were self taught, and all of his knowledge was theoretical. There was little reason to risk leaving the village to gain experience; he could seriously get in over his head, it could be discovered he left, that would end badly for Konoha's weapon, and any unknown, unknowns could happen. So, while his knowledge would qualify him for tokubetsu jonin or regular jonin his lack of experience was a serious liability.

He took a moment to scan the newly minted genin. They all looked so incredibly excited, it put a bit of a damper on his mood. The ideals of Konoha were something to strive for but that's all they were. After he started reading up on politics and keeping an ear to the ground about the inner workings of Konoha, he realized how much the Old Man had been slipping. It seemed that he might have just gotten too old to properly do his job. Slowly, factions other than the Hokage had begun to consolidate their political power. Their influence seemed to be showing up more and more lately. Originally, he had wanted to leave Konoha entirely, but at Kurama's urging he had reconsidered. The Old Man probably couldn't stop them sending someone after him even if he was only a civilian, he was Konoha's Jinchuriki after all.

The academy was an easy place to see the corruption of the various political bodies taking root. For whatever reason, the standards to pass had fallen dramatically, as had the more advanced material they were to learn. Even in the last three years there had been some important, if not dramatic, changes in the curriculum. He was concerned. While he may dislike the majority of Konoha, the graduates were just kids who didn't question their parents, and their lack of training would probably end up with them dead before they managed to do anything of significance with their lives—if you didn't count dying for Konoha's glory.

_**So, regretting not sneaking into the Hokage's office to find out your team placement yet?**_

_ Not really. You helped me come up with the plan to make it irrelevant. _

_**True.**_ Kurama sighed. _** I'm just bored.**_

_Make any incredibly exciting breakthroughs since last night?_

_**Afraid not.**_ Another sigh. _**I expect we'll either have to wait for a mission near Uzushiogakure or until you have enough autonomy to go yourself before we can find a solution.**_

_Well, I was planning on visiting eventually anyway._

"Naruto!" Iruka yelled.

"Hm?" Naruto realized that the entire class was now staring at him.

"I said, I'm going to announce the team placements now so pay attention."

"Sorry Sensei, I was just thinking about what kind of ramen to get after!" He explained with a huge grin plastered across his face. Most of the class just snorted and turned back toward the front. Iruka simply shook his head and began reading.

"Team One will be Naruto Uzumaki-" Naruto quit paying attention after that. It didn't matter anyway. He drew back into his thoughts to go over his plan for the test again. He'd watched some of the previous years tests with shadow clones henged in various woodland creatures. The odd bit about his henge was that the transformation was solid, unlike the E-Rank version he was supposed to do. It was solid in the sense that his chakra became monstrously dense and became a second skin. Henging into things smaller than himself was inadvisable, which was why his shadow clones were the ones to do it. Kurama and he weren't sure what would happen if he tried to henge into something small, but a possibility was super condensing his body, which didn't sound fun at all.

Eventually all the screams about the fairness of the team broke him out of his reverie, and he wished once again that he remembered to bring ear plugs to class.

"Quiet down, your jonin-sensei's will be coming in to take you momentarily." Iruka left the room, presumably to pick up the senseis. When he came back in the room a few minutes later there were some fairly famous faces trailing him; Asuma Sarutobi the Hokage's son, Kurenai Yuhi one of Konoha's foremost genjutsu experts, and Kakashi Hatake the Copy Nin. _The class must have looked very promising if the Hokage tapped this level of talent to stick in teaching positions._

"Team One, you're with me," called a male jonin who was only slightly taller than Naruto's five foot eight. His new sensei also seemed fairly shocked when he finally stood up to follow him out of the academy. The results of Kurama supercharging his body for the last three years were quite satisfactory. If his growth kept on, he might exceed six and a half feet.

Naruto walked with two of the sub par genins to a nearby park with a nice view of Hokage Mountain for their team meeting. The team would definitely fail their real genin test. They all took a seat on the grass under a tree, facing their jonin-sensei. He appeared to be in his upper twenties, around the time most ninja died if they made it past chunin. A fading scar ran diagonally from the right side of his forehead down to the left side of his jaw.

"Why don't we do introductions to make sure we all know each other?" None of the genin were particularly enthused about this prospect. The jonin winced a little before continuing, "Let me go first. I'm Chiba Atsushi. I like sake, movies, and painting. My hobbies are training and calligraphy. Things I dislike are arrogance and sweets. I don't have a dream other than having a family one day."

Naruto decided to get it over with, "My name's Naruto Uzumaki! I like all things ramen, training, and gardening. I dislike the end, since it's also the beginning," everyone else's eyes scrunched together in confusion at that. "My dream is to be the greatest Hokage!" He left his sense of reality to autopilot while he tried to make a comprehensive mental list of things he'd need for the test.

"Alright!" Atsushi exclaimed, clapping his hands together. "In two hours all of you will meet me at training ground eighteen to take the test to become actual genin." Naruto reacted with his temporary teammates so as not to heap suspicion on himself. The element of surprise was fairly important in his plan.

An hour and a half later, Naruto was standing in front of a full length mirror making sure he looked cool enough for his entrance. He wore a turtleneck and cargo pants that were mottled green. His pant legs were tucked into a high laced, closed toe boot. Bandages, in the same blotchy green, were wrapped from the wrist of his leather gloves all the way to his elbow. A black half mask, with a slit for his mouth, covered his whisker marks. Spiky blond hair bound in a rough pony tail ended just above the canisters sitting horizontally across his lower back. Each canister was colored a dull, dark gray, and only six inches across. Both had a sharp pointed conical weight attached to the middle. Resting under the canisters were his two kukri, who's hilts were standing out to either side of his torso.

He attached a pouch to the outside of each thigh, and adjusted the ones clipped to the canister harness on either hip. Now he just had to decide on where his forehead protector would go. It was too shiny to use really, but it wasn't like he was going outside the village. _Eh, might as well just use it like a forehead protector for now. I don't really have time to whip anything else up._ He checked his clock again. _Did I really spend that much time checking my equipment?!_ His right hand came up in a half ram seal, and he disappeared in a shunshin.

The pillar of bright green fire he emerged from was awesome every time he saw it. Shunshin was surprisingly flashy for no reason. Atsushi and his two temporary teammates appeared to agree if their shocked expressions were any indication.

"Yo," he waved casually.

"Uzumaki-san?" the jonin-sensei was tentative. Naruto nodded. "Alright," he began slowly, trying to shake off the weirdness of a student completely changing, "like I said before, you have to fight me and show me that you have the skills to be real genin." He took a moment to look at each of the genin, admittedly it took a little longer with Naruto, but he raised his hand and dropped it, shouting, "Go!"

Naruto took a moment to check out his surroundings while he watched the other two genin retreat to the tree line. He and Atsushi stood in a large forest clearing, _big_ surprise there. There didn't appear to be any close bodies of water, and there were no large obstacles like boulders and the like.

"Ninja aren't just about fighting Uzumaki-san. You're supposed to be showing me your ninja skills, but the fact that you're facing down a superior adversary in a frontal assault isn't looking good for your evaluation," he lectured.

"You're right about that first thing sensei." Naruto eye-smiled and brought his hands together. _Genjustu: Bringer of Darkness._ Atsushi visibly panicked for a moment before bringing himself under control. Man, getting a look at the Forbidden Scroll had really been an asset.

* * *

_Night of the Graduation Exam_

Naruto leapt through the trees near the walls of Konoha. About ten minutes before, a henged clone had dispersed. Its memories showed Mizuki rushing away from Hokage Tower with a large scroll clutched in his arms. He had immediately ordered his other observation clones to follow and report his location.

He sensed Mizuki closing in on his position. Suppressing his chakra until the last moment, he flung himself at the white haired traitor. His shoulder crunched into Mizuki's floating ribs, and the tree on the other side thudded into the side of Mizuki's head. Naruto winced at the branches the unconscious man hit on the way down. A chunin shouldn't have been taken out so easily; he must have really let himself slip when he became a teacher at the academy.

With scavenged ninja wire, he tied Mizuki to two trees in a sitting crucifixion position to prevent him from doing any hand seals if he woke up. Naruto then turned his attention to the large scroll on the ground. He opened it without having to disengage any seals or anything, which seemed pretty irresponsible after he saw the contents.

* * *

_Present_

He'd gotten a B-Ranked mission payment after he told the Hokage what had happened. Plus, he got a nice look at some jutsus, not that the Hokage seemed to be any the wiser.

Two conical weights trailing ninja wire shot from the ground near Atsushi's feet. The two weights wove a lightning fast dance around the blinded jonin. His limbs were all pulled together as the ninja wire tightened. Atsushi began spasming and convulsing, a testament to the lightning chakra running through the wire. A quiet poof heralded the disappearance of the wire, but before the jonin could drop to the ground, two more Narutos sprinted from the treeline and held their arms out toward him. The original dropped the genjutsu and held out his arms as well. _Ninpo: Chakra Mummification_. Green bandages unraveled at a staggering pace before whipping around the falling body of Atsushi. A faint blue glow could be seen through the wrapped bandages, before the two clones simply poofed out of existence, and the bandages returned to the original's arms.

The jonin flopped onto the ground, probably experiencing chakra exhaustion in addition to the muscle damage from the electric shock. He could feel the chakra the seals had stolen from Atsushi flowing into his arms. It was a drop in the bucket, but you could never have too much chakra.

_Hmm. I still don't know if flaring your youki is a good idea for a signal to get the Hokage here._

_**It's one of your few options, and the only one I can think of that will definitely involve the Hokage immediately.**_

_Well, here goes nothing._ Naruto reached down into the well in his stomach and forced the youki out into the atmosphere. He sensed the two genin begin to shudder uncontrollably as the natural malevolence laced into Kurama's youki made itself known. The flare only lasted a few seconds, after he simply crossed his arms over his chest and waited for the war party. _I don't really want to be candid with the man who lied to me my entire life, but it's the only way to advance quickly._

Less than a minute later the Hokage landed in the clearing with a small ANBU guard.

"Yo, Old Man," he greeted with a lazy wave. He didn't really want to use the affectionate title from his youth, but it would be way too suspicious if he suddenly was maskless and referred to the Hokage formally.

"Naruto-kun?" his eyes were narrowed and his body tense.

"I don't think anyone else in the village has spiky blond hair."

"I felt an odd energy spike a few moments ago."

"Yeah, that was me. It's kind of a long story. Suffice to say, it was completely controlled, and I simply wanted you to see what I did to Atsushi-san here as a preface to a conversation in your office." Naruto put a hand to his chin and rubbed it. "Maybe over some tea? Well, you'll have your pipe, and I'll be drinking tea." The Hokage nodded and disappeared in a shunshin. Naruto's pillar of fire sprung up and he quickly followed.

When Naruto arrived at the office, his turtleneck and pants had turned black. His bandages and the borders of the pockets on his pants were crimson. _That modified illusion seal is really working out._ The Hokage was already seated at his desk when he shunshinned in. He slid his mask down his face and sighed as he settled into the chair in front of the desk.

"I've been hiding my skills for the last few years. My general worry was that I would be hampered even more if people had known the 'demon' was getting strong." He paused to rub at his neck while he rolled it. "I also wanted to practice my deception. My theoretical knowledge could probably qualify me for tokubetsu jonin, but my lack of experience probably puts me somewhere around mid-chunin. Questions?"

"How did you defeat Chiba Atsushi?"

"In order: genjutsu, ninja wire, lightning chakra, chakra absorption seal."

"How advanced are you with sealing?"

"No idea, I've never had anyone to compare to."

"Tell me of your intentions with your team."

"Well, first off," Naruto began, "that team would fail if I wasn't on it. Secondly, my intention was to show that I don't need a genin team." He pondered his options for a moment. "Ideally, I'd like to be apprenticed to someone who can help me clean up all my self taught skills."

"Do you have any suggestions?"

"Anko Mitarashi and I could probably come to an understanding." He hmmed to himself in thought. "I don't really have information on a lot of jonin. If I couldn't get an apprenticeship, getting passed around between needy chunin teams probably wouldn't be too bad. Getting passed around the passing genin teams would be my last choice. I'd probably end up having to teach them with the jonin."

"I'd much prefer you to be on a team Naruto-kun," the Hokage sighed. It seemed he was having trouble reconciling the rascal with reality. "It's dangerous to practice without any supervision, and I don't want to see you hurt."

_At least he means that._ He paused and chuckled internally. _Hey Kurama, how do you think he'd react if he found out you were my supervision?_

_**Is there a clause anywhere about becoming Hokage via combat? Maybe you could do the reveal during that and give him a heart attack.**_

"Hopefully now that I'm a full ninja things won't be so dangerous anymore." Hiruzen winced and shook his head slightly in an attempt to clear his thoughts.

"I can't see a reason to send you back to the academy. Now be truthful with me, what was that energy you used."

"I think we both know you already know what it was," the old man winced again at the slight glare he was receiving. Naruto wasn't particularly angry with the Hokage anymore; he just found it impossible to trust anything he said without verification. "Don't worry though, all I can do is draw that small bit out. Occasionally it seems that the Kyuubi is trying to contact me through my dreams, but it can never seem to be coherent." Kurama snickered.

"Very well. I'll call Anko-chan here for one o'clock tomorrow afternoon, so we can plead your case."

Naruto gave him a true smile and said, "Thanks Old Man," before disappearing in a pillar of green fire.

* * *

Naruto jumped through the Hokage's office window at twelve fifty five the next day. The Hokage didn't seem to be in the mood to bother to act surprised. He plopped down in one of the chairs and yawned.

"Hey Old Man, she very punctual or what?" Before he could reply, the doors burst open. Anko Mitarashi sported a tan trench coat and a mesh bodysuit with a dark orange skirt belted over it. Her dark purple hair had an odd fanned pony tail and a wooden skewer was held between her teeth.

"Hey there Hokage-sama," she called boisterously. "What did you need me for?" Her hands seemed to fiddle in her trench coat pockets.

_ Is she nervous?_

_**Not everyone talks to the Hokage so easily Naruto.**_

"Ah, Anko-chan," he acknowledged and set down the piece of paperwork he was slaving over. "I've called you here today to ask something of a favor from you." If she wasn't nervous before, she definitely looked it now.

"What do you need Hokage-sama?"

"I was wondering if you'd be willing to take one of our more promising genin as an apprentice."

"Me, a sensei?" she stuttered slightly. "Are you sure Hokage-sama?" Hiruzen simply nodded, and she fell deep into thought for a moment. "Wait, we're not talking about that faggot Uchiha are we?" Naruto couldn't hold in his snicker and managed to draw attention to himself. "And who might you be my little would-be apprentice?"

Naruto wagged his finger and chastised, "Now now Anko-chan, that would be telling wouldn't it?" She puffed her cheeks out in annoyance at the same time one of her hands started to move toward one of her weapon pouches. "I might decide to tell you if you beat me in a spar at a training ground of your choice." Of course she could figure it out easily, and probably already had a fairly good idea who Naruto was, but that was all part of the game.

"Forty four, ten minutes," was all it took for Naruto to disappear in his flame shunshin.

By the time Anko arrived, almost exactly ten minutes later, Naruto was leaning against the fence surrounding the Forest of Death with his arms crossed over his chest. His eyes were closed, and his breathing appeared slow and regular. Anko stalked up to him slowly, but before she was within twenty feet, his eyes opened.

"Arriving early is also a part of punctuality Anko-chan." She scoffed and abandoned her slow approach to walk right up to him. Her eyes strayed all over him unabashedly.

"Aren't you a big one for thirteen," she stated.

"Maybe you can find out just how big later," he retorted with a waggle of his eyebrows.

"You're that Uzumaki kid right?"

"That'd be me," Naruto confirmed with flourishing bow.

"Aren't you butt buddies with the Uchiha?" she wondered seriously. Her seriousness only made Naruto laugh harder.

_ That is never not going to be funny._ "Kind of, but not really." She just raised an eye brow and waited. "Last year the princess was being a dick, so I told him to shove it. He responded with an insensitive comment about my family and so the debt was incurred." Naruto started theatrically. "One day I snuck into the Uchiha compound in the morning and knocked him out. A shadow clone of me henged into him and went to the academy in his place. Cut to after academy lets out, where I managed to isolate that pink haired fan girl of his and let her follow Shadow Sasuke to my apartment."

Naruto had to stop his laughter again as he recalled Sakura's horrified face at the corner of his window. "Okay, so that part was a bit of a gamble, but she acted just like I thought she would and peeked through the partially open window before knocking on the door. What scene could possibly make her horrified yet aroused? The answer is Shadow Sasuke's head bobbing in Shadow Naruto's lap." Anko burst out laughing at the thought of a fangirl's dreams crashing down around her. "She even stayed longer than I thought she would, so Shadow Naruto ended up getting behind Shadow Sasuke," he paused momentarily. "Those memories were uncomfortable." Naruto coughed and continued, "Anyway, Shadow Sasuke was saying all kinds of nasty shit." He made a sealess shadow clone who henged into Sasuke.

Shadow Sasuke began to moan and repeat some of his lines, "Oh, Naru-sama let me eat your cum. Please Naru-sama, give me your fat cock." Shadow Sasuke dispelled doing a passable impression of taking it from behind. Anko was bent over laughing.

"After the Fangirl left, I took pictures of the clones going at it in all kinds of positions. Of course they looked like they were taken from outside through a window. The next morning I put them all up on the blackboard and hid them under a genjutsu until most of the class came in." He started laughing again thinking about everyone's reactions. "With the Harpy confirming that Sasuke does indeed bottom, everyone in the class thought he was gay by the end of the day. Best part?" I asked rhetorically. "The temporary sleep seal I put on him after I knocked him out made him forget about getting knocked out. He still has no idea to this day if it was actually him. Additional hilarity: he confronted me about it, and I convinced him not to refute it because it would get his fangirls off his back. After I convinced him it wasn't me of course."

After she calmed down and give him a red faced double thumbs up, she had to ask, "Why smear yourself with that, and why make everyone think he's gay?"

"I'm pretty sure the gay and or bisexual demon isn't too much of a step down from heterosexual demon," Naruto snorted. "For the second, you have to consider why the village kisses his ass." Confusion gave way to comprehension and her eyes started to twinkle with mirth. "Yeah. They all want little Uchiha's running around, but they think he's gay. At the very least there's going to be an extremely uncomfortable council meeting where they confront him about it and the possibility of overcoming his disgust for the female form long enough to put a baby in one."

"Are you ready for that spar now Prank-kun?" she asked after she was sufficiently calmed down.

"Wait. There's something you have to agree to before we start." She didn't question him or fly off the handle, so he took it as a 'go ahead'. "As much as I hate to admit it, the Old Man is in a losing political battle right now. I'm sure you've noticed that people other than the Hokage seem to be wielding a bit more power recently." She nodded hesitantly. "I need to you to keep as much of a lid as you can on what I can do, even in your reports to the Old Man. I'm not exactly well liked here, and I'm afraid some political bodies might start to try to catch me in a technicality." He sighed inwardly, it was true but not his only reason.

"We're too similar for me to sell you out Whiskers," she commented somberly.

"Alright then. I guess it's time for a spar."

"Let's go all out Whisker-chan." The area outside of the fence was fairly flat and without much cover other than the occasional rock formation and a few stands of trees. Anko walked an arbitrary distance away from the fence and got into a stance with a kunai in reverse grip. Naruto wasn't arrogant enough to think that just because he beat a jonin who was going easy and surprised, he could beat a tokubetsu jonin who was prepared. He walked out opposite her, standing with his arms relaxed at his sides.

"Whenever you're ready Anko-chan," he teased with an eye-smile. She raised her arm and dropped it lazily.

_Genjutsu: Bringer of Darkness!_ Multiple wires exploded from the ground around Anko's feet. She rushed forward before they could even touch her, multiple kunai cutting through the air toward Naruto's chest. He had to move, breaking the genjutsu.

"Heh, not bad kid," she complimented as the kunai she brought down clanged against the unsheathed kukri in his left hand.

_Ninpo: Poison Mist._ He exhaled sharply, allowing a sickly yellow gas to shoot out from his mouth. A log poofed into Anko's position before the mist even made it halfway across the small distance. _ Not good, I'm way too exposed. _His right hand formed the half ram seal. _Water Release: Hidden Mist Jutsu. _Mist quickly began settling over the area as his chakra permeated the air and began condensing the moisture.

"Fire Release: Fire Dragon Bullet!" Anko's voice rang through the area. Bright light and a roar punctured the newly formed mist and dug into the ground before sending dirt everywhere in an impressive explosion. He got the memories from the shadow cloned he kawarimied with to escape the blast and sighed at their fatalistic attitude. Naruto wandered out of cover, eager to be show off some of his other skills. Shuriken practically rained down on him a stand of trees.

_Wind Release: Great Breakthrough._ All of the projectiles were pushed off course by the wall of wind. Naruto held both kukris securely. _Alright, let's see how she likes this. Wind Release: Octo Slicer!_ He made four quick cuts like he was dividing a pie, and watched the four blades of wind streak into the trees where the shuriken originated from. The attack left a gaping hole in the woodland, but he had the feeling he probably didn't come even close to Anko. His weapons went back in their sheathes just so he was ready.

He managed to whirl around after sensing something just in time to see Anko throw her arms toward him and say, "Hidden Shadow Snakes." Surprise gave way to a smile as Naruto copied her stance and pumped chakra into his bandages. Anko's face was priceless as his bandages wrapped around the snakes, rendering them useless, and then continued slithering up her arms. They began glowing and drawing her chakra, but she poofed away into nothingness.

_Damn, shadow clones?_

"That's enough," Anko said as she appeared near Naruto. "If I don't miss my guess you're needing help with your taijutsu and weapons work yeah?"

"In a nutshell, I really just need experience and someone that has it to correct the kinds of things theoretical knowledge gets wrong or needs adjusted."

"I have plenty of ideas for you," she smirked while wringing her hands mischievously.

"So, I'm your apprentice then?"

"Sure are! Let's go celebrate!" she exclaimed walking out of the clearing.

"How are we celebrating Sensei?"

"Hrm," she put a finger to her lips in thought. "If you're good you might get to hear me try out some of Shadow Sasuke's lines." Naruto stumbled and blinked stupidly. Shaking himself out of it he resumed following her with a faint blush crawling up his cheeks.

* * *

A/N the Latter: I've decided to make the regular version of the Henge into an illusion. Canon Henge is a real transformation! That shit would be hax if everyone in canon weren't slightly retarded. For reference, during the Shukaku fight Naruto transforms Gamabunta into Kyuubi so he can use the claws to grip onto Shukaku.

So, just for balance purposes, true transformation justu has been upgraded to B-Rank instead of E-Rank in this fic. For the curious, the amount of chakra needed is proportional to the mass change.


	3. Shortcomings

Disclaimer: I don't own Naruto

A/N: Couple things for this chapter:

Bourbon exists in this Narutoverse because it is awesome and I am sick of hearing about people only drinking tea and sake.

10 ryo = 1 USD for no other reason than it feels right.

Anko constantly slightly changing nicknames is by design.

charlessawasawa24 & savethetub: You guys are awesome for being my first reviewers.

3ch0: There's almost no way this isn't a troll, but please refer to the A/N at the bottom of the second chapter.

Henge clarification: There is overwhelming evidence in canon that the E-Rank academy jutsu, Henge, is a solid transformation that can survive a hit or two. In this fic, the E-Rank academy Henge is an illusion/hologram just like the academy bunshin. However, there is a B-Rank jutsu, Ninjutsu: True Transformation, that is solid. The reason for that is thus: consider how little chakra the academy jutsu take. You could literally turn your skin into metal, or turn your arms in chains with swords at the end. It just seems way overpowered.

Remember that this fic is written pretty much entirely from Naruto's POV. What this means is that Naruto's conclusions and observations can be completely wrong. In this case, he thinks that he's made a special Henge, when he's really just independently discovered the B-Rank version because he kept overloading the regular Henge.

Enjoy.

"Conversing."

_Naruto's thoughts._

_**Kyuubi's thoughts.**  
_

* * *

Naruto took a look around the tea house Anko had dragged him to after the spar. She was busy putting in an order for a ridiculous amount of dango. The inside of the shop was well traveled, but in good repair—plus, they seemed to accept Anko which gave him hope that they could meet there regularly without him getting kicked out. For now, he was in the clear, because hardly anyone knew of his costume change.

"Ah, three orders of nikudango, and if you could just bring me an empty cup, I would really appreciate it," he finished with an eye-smile. He leaned back in his chair and threw an arm over the back, sitting askew. "Any questions for me Anko-sensei?"

"What's up with the bandages and the wires?"

"Well, I was spending a bunch of time manipulating them for chakra control, so I figured I might as well leverage the skill for something." The waitress came back and set down a bottle of sake for Anko and the empty cup for Naruto. "Thanks so much." Anko made a 'get on with it' motion after pouring herself some sake. "Bandages have chakra absorption seals on them. As for what they can do, that'll just have to be a secret for now Anko-chan."

"What's your chakra nature?"

"Pretty much equal wind and water," he paused to remove a small storage scroll from a hip pouch and unrolled it on the table. With a poof, a small box and flask appeared. A finger tapped the top of the ornate wooden box, and a seal on the lid lit up. "I've done the second step nature transformation training for both of them," he stopped again as the seal began to fade. The cap of the flask squeaked as he unscrewed it. "I did the first step for lightning and earth in the interests of being well rounded." A dark amber colored liquid flowed from the mouth of the flask into the cup. He flipped the lid off the box and came out with a disc shaped rock that was about half the size of his palm. It slipped into the cup and rested at the bottom. Anko hadn't said anything while he was silent, because her mouth refused to close apparently. It was Naruto's turn to cock an eyebrow in her direction.

"How the fuck are you that advanced?" she nearly yelled in exasperation.

"Started out when I was ten, and abused shadow clones like they owed me money." She grumbled a little, annoyed. A smirk spread across his face,"Would little Anko-chan like some lessons perhaps?"

"Tch," she didn't rise to the jab, letting him win the round in return for not having to acknowledge her annoyance out loud. "How many jutsu can you use without seals or speaking?"

"Only my core techniques. It really does take forever to get them down to that point," he conceded. "Probably the only reason I can do it is because I can set clones on it. It's not really important enough to devote your entire training to—as long as it doesn't catch on that is."

The conversation devolved into small talk, and the minutes sped by as they waited for the food to come out. It completely ended once the dango arrived. Naruto also got a front seat to something akin to a feeding frenzy. _Man, if that's how I looked when I ate ramen, I'm pretty glad I pulled back on the consumption._ He finished his three orders of meatballs at the same time Anko finished her six of dango. Before Anko could say anything, he finished his drink and washed the stone at the bottom off with a simple water jutsu. It went back in the box and the seal on the lid lit up after he closed the lid.

"What is that?" she asked as he poured more of the amber liquid into his cup.

"Liquor. It's called bourbon."

"Can I try some?"

"Ehh, sure. You can finish the flask off if you want," he handed it to her as she licked her lips. "Just be advised its probably twice as strong as sake."

With a, "Pfft," she downed the last shot. After swishing it around in her mouth for a second, she swallowed and her eyes started to water. Only one cough made it out, which left Naruto impressed. He dropped the stone back into his cup before taking a drink of his own. "Why is it so spicy?"

"I assume because it's got a large rye component." He took another drink of his rapidly cooling bourbon. "It's good stuff though, yeah?"

She thumped her chest and asked, "How can you stand to drink that?"

"It's smoother once you cool it down."

_**You're not going to tell her you can't get drunk 'cause of your regeneration?**_

_Nah, let's save that for inevitable challenge to a drinking contest._

_**Now that isn't very sportsmanlike**_. Kurama chuckled.

_I'll leave sportsmanship to the samurai._

"Why with a stone?"

"Don't want to dilute this. It's expensive."

"So, Whisker-chan, got any ideas for your training?"

"Well, I had considered setting up some kind of genin team sparring."

Anko cut him off with, "That sounds like a great idea!" The way she was wringing her hands and muttering about winning bets with other senseis made him feel a little embarrassed for her though.

"If you really want to make some money betting, why don't we have a mock tournament for all the genin. One on one of course." He rubbed at his chin, "If they weren't satisfied we could even have a team tourney afterward."

"Oh Whiskers!" she shouted before latching onto and nuzzling him. "You're such a good little student, trying to make your sensei money." Surprisingly, nothing on the table was disturbed by the glomping.

* * *

A week later the Rookie Nine and Team Gai were milling around at a training ground beyond the walls of Konoha. Apparently they thought things might get a little destructive. The ground was designed, like most Konoha training grounds it seemed, with a large open area surrounded by trees and thick undergrowth. There was even a river running through the far end of the grounds. Naruto jumped from the tree he'd been lazing into the group of genin.

"Alright," Asuma called, "if you don't already know, the genin are going to have a little tournament." Kurenai handed him box with slips of paper in it. "Each of your senseis has dropped some money in a pot, so your incentive is that the winner and their sensei get to split the winnings amongst themselves."

"How much we talkin' here?" Kiba loudly asked.

"Each of the us put 5,000 ryo down, so with the five of us you get to split 25,000 ryo." The mutterings increased at that. Most of the genin who passed were clan heirs—money wasn't really tight, but that didn't mean their parents shelled out a lot for their allowances. They were genin now, and were supposed to earn their own money. "Anyway, the reason we're holding this is partly for fun and partly to help us evaluate where each of our own genin are at, so don't hold back." He crushed the butt of the cigarette he'd been smoking under his sandal, but was prevented from continuing by the interruption of Shikamaru.

"It's troublesome, but aren't we missing a few people if there are five senseis?"

"Ah, Anko-san here," Asuma waved lazily toward the group of other senseis trading small talk, "only has an apprentice, not a full team." He waited briefly for any more questions, when none came he said, "Okay, come on up and pull a slip of paper out. It'll determine your position in the bracket." It only took five minutes for everyone to take a number.

_Round One: Hinata v. Sakura_

_Round Two: Neji v. Shino_

_Round Three: Kiba v. Ino_

_Round Four: Lee v. Sasuke_

_Round Five: Tenten v. Shikamaru_

_Round Six: Naruto v. Choji_

_Bye: Sai_

Anko walked into the middle of the clearing. "Alright kiddies! I've only got one horse in this thing, so I'll be your proctor. Everyone except Pale Eyes and Pinky back up," she shooed everyone away. Hinata was unabashedly nervous, pressing her forefingers together. Sakura was trying much harder to appear confident.

_ Probably 'cause of her 'Sasuke-kun'. Well let's not kid ourselves, that's definitely the reason._ _Let's see, what can I do to distract her._ Naruto really didn't want Sakura to win against Hinata, the shy girl deserved some sort of confidence boost. Suddenly an idea popped into his head, and it involved fucking with Sasuke too!

"Fight!" Anko yelled as she dropped her arm. The two went at it fairly pathetically, Sakura only had poorly trained academy basics, and Hinata wasn't willing to bring her superior training to bare for fear of hurting someone. Naruto decided to tip the playing field by sneaking up behind Sasuke and draping himself over his shoulders.

"Hey there Uke-chan," Naruto greeted happily. Once he'd spoken, Ino and Tenten took their attention away from the fight. The scene sparked their memories of the rumors surrounding Sasuke if the blushes on their faces was any indication. Apart from Sasuke, the other guys seemed to have varying levels of discomfort about the whole situation. At least none of them blushed, that would also be weird. Sasuke growled, but apparently decided that his stoicism was more important than removing Naruto from his back. "Aw Uke-chan, they already know how much you like it when I bend you over, so you don't have to be like that."

Sasuke abruptly threw his arms up, forcing Naruto to let go of him, and stalked off with anger and embarrassment reddening his face. Probably one of the better responses he could have chosen. Anything more and they would definitely think it was an overreaction due to embarrassment. Sasuke's outburst drew Sakura's attention out of the fight and Hinata was able to get a kunai to her throat.

"Winner Hinata!" Anko called. Sakura grumbled the whole time, glaring daggers at Naruto as she walked over to Sasuke. "Next fight! Neji and Shino, come on down!" Naruto didn't really care about watching his competition, he'd been doing that for the entire time he was in the academy. Not to mention the henged clones he had sitting around at the training grounds. He made a sealess shadow clone that immediately henged into a hammock with a stand. His joints popped as he stretched and yawned before climbing into the hammock and nodding off.

A far off poof was all that warned him he'd be crashing into the ground. Anko's kunai thudded into a tree behind him. "Hey Whiskers! You're up!" Naruto bemoaned his rough treatment as he walked over to the place opposite Choji. "Ready? Fight!"

Naruto flipped quickly through three hand signs and said, "Ninpo: Poison Bullet." He spat, and a ball of milky white liquid the size of softball streaked toward Choji. Taken off guard by the abrupt attack, Choji didn't sidestep quick enough. The ball burst on his shoulder, soaking his shirt and absorbing into his skin. A little cloud of dust kicked up as the chubby boy couldn't halt the momentum he still had from his attempted dodge. After a few seconds on the ground, a wide grin spread across his face. "He won't be able to fight, but he should probably remember the next hour of his life as one of the most fantastic."

"Winner, Whisker-chan!" Naruto started to walk away, but was stopped by Anko's voice, "Hold up Whiskers, you've got to fight Pasty-kun." Someone Naruto didn't recognize from the academy walked into the tournament area. He had a weird half shirt, shoulder sleeve thing on. His black hair set off his extremely pale skin, and Naruto could see a hilt over his right shoulder. "Ready?" she got a nod from both of them, "Fight!"

_Water Release: Hidden Mist._ The mist descended quickly and visibility was reduced to a foot within ten seconds. With his chakra permeating the mist, Naruto could feel that Sai hadn't moved. He sped through four hand seals and whispered, "Earth Release: Earth-Style Wall." His foot thudded into the ground, releasing the built up chakra. A wall built of earth shot up under Sai's feet with a grinding rumble. _Wind Release: Great Breakthrough!_ Naruto pumped double the chakra he normally did into the jutsu and aimed for where he felt Sai trying to regain his balance on the wall. Howling wind tore up through the mist, dispelling it, but hitting the pale boy. Sai flew up into the air at a forty five degree angle.

"Ah, I might have put too much behind that one," Naruto commented, rubbing the back of his neck. He look back up at Sai and his eyes widened, "Someone might wanna catch him!" he gesticulated wildly toward the thick stand of trees Sai was going to land in. He still hadn't managed to bring himself out of the wind jutsu induced tumble, and if he couldn't right himself before he dropped in there, things would be bad. Kakashi disappeared before reappearing a second later with his hand around Sai's collar. It looked like he'd been knocked out from the get go. _Hopefully he didn't get hurt too bad._

"Winner by knockout Naruto!" Naruto noticed that the only one clapping was Anko. Kakashi's face was buried in his porn, Gai was talking animatedly at Kakashi, Kurenai's face held shock, and Asuma's shock was mixed with something like curiosity. "Alright killer get off the field," she gave him a little shove. "I need the two pale eyes up here."

After standing on the sidelines and watching the beginning of the fight, Naruto heard someone clear their throat next to him. To his surprise, it was a nervous looking Ino.

"Yes?"

"If you're this strong, why were you almost last in our class?"

"There was no point as long as I became a ninja." At her confusion he elaborated, "Deception is a deceptively strong tool," he snickered to himself. On the periphery of his hearing, he heard Hinata concede the match to Neji, and Anko call for Kiba and Lee. "If you haven't noticed yet, the Rookie of the Year from our class was beaten by the Dobe of last year."

"But he already had a whole year as a genin!"

"So?" he wondered bluntly. "It's no different in the field. Do you think you'll always be on a level playing field?" he shook his head. "Deception and cunning my dear, they are invaluable."

"Are you and Sasuke-kun really, uhm... you know?" she asked after a few minutes of silence.

"You know if he does regularly blow me, and if you did it too, it would be like an indirect kiss," he mused. "Interesting stuff."

"Winner Lee! Whiskers, Weapons-chan, get up here!"

"Well, duty calls Ino-chan." Naruto lined up across from Tenten in a relaxed stance.

"Ready? Fight!"

_Wind Release: Great Breakthrough!_ Naruto only powered it up to half strength to throw off the small barrage of kunai Tenten had immediately launched at him. "You'll have to try harder than that Ten-chan," he commented with an eye-smile. A poof of smoke later and she was holding a sword.

"Let's get up close and personal then!" She ran toward Naruto with the sword held down and next to her body, one hand on the hilt and the other on the pommel; the tip drew a fine line along the ground behind her as she charged. It rose quickly in a monster uppercut toward his groin. A clang sounded for Naruto's successful defense. Tenten's blade was currently trapped between the crossed kukris.

"Hey Ten-chan, this blade doesn't have any sort of sentimental value to you does it?" She shook her head. He couldn't really be angry with her for answering, but it seemed pretty automatic. Freely giving your information to your enemy was poor idea all around. Naruto bent forward with his wind chakra flowing and pivoted his blades while pulling. Two thirds of scissored off blade dropped to the ground. He whipped his upper body backwards, snapping up his leg, and caught her on the chin with a high front kick. She stumbled back, and fell on her ass without trying to catch herself. Ah, the good old brain rattle. Front kicks to the head were great for that kind of thing.

"Winner Whiskers!" Lee immediately rushed onto the field to help Tenten once Anko announced the end of the fight.

"Yosh! You both showed extreme flames of youth!" Lee began shouting after his teammate was carted to the sidelines. "In order to stoke our fires of youth I suggest Neji and I have a match! Then the winner can fight Naruto-san. It is most unyouthful for him to have fought more matches us _and_ have to face two teammates in a three way fight!" Everyone seemed to turn toward Naruto after the declaration.

"Don't look at me. It would be my advantage, so you'll have to decide between the two of you and your sensei." When Gai shouted excitedly after running over, Naruto knew that Neji and Lee would fight before him. His spot at the sideline was still open, so he found himself standing beside Ino once again.

"So, do you think you can win?" Ino again.

"Not to be a dick or anything," Naruto qualified, "but you're sure talking to me a lot today."

"It would be hard to not realize you're different than the Naruto from the academy, and," she paused and a hint of a blush crept up her cheeks, "I'm curious about you."

"Aw so cute," he patted her on the head. "I'm afraid I'm a little too old for you. I could use a little sister figure though, how about that?"

"We're the same age!" she spouted a little angrily.

"Really? It seems like that to you?" Ino crossed her arms over her chest and turned back toward the fight with a huff. _Ah, teasing never gets old._

Five minutes later, Neji managed to hit Lee with enough finger pokes to knock him on his ass.

"Winner Veins-kun!" Neji looked exasperated with her random nicknames for him. "Ten minute intermission before the finals, Whiskers-chan versus Veins-kun!" Anko walked over to Naruto after her pronouncement. "How you feelin' Whiskers? In fighting shape?"

Naruto barely held back a scoff before answering, "I think I've got a fair chance. Why?"

"I just wanted to give you a little extra incentive."

He was fairly certain where she was going, but couldn't help but ask, "Oh, and what would that be?"

She got on her tip toes and leaned in so her mouth was next to his ear, "I thought if you won me that pot, I'd really have to show my _appreciation_ after our celebration."

"Now, now Anko-chan. It isn't very nice to tease like that." She just stepped away from him with a devious little smirk that promised he had no idea whether she was being serious or not. Naruto sighed inwardly, _So frustrating sometimes._ He walked over to his starting position, while shaking his head, to drop into the lotus position and wait for the match to start.

A few minutes later he heard Anko yell, "Final match, Whisker-chan versus Vein-kun. Ready?" Naruto nodded without getting up. Apparently Neji didn't care that he was still sitting down, because a moment later Anko exclaimed, "Fight!"

"Water Release: Poison Bullet!" Naruto spat the ball of clear liquid up in the air. Neji tracked the ball, unconcerned about Naruto since he hadn't moved. Wires shot up from the ground and wrapped around Neji's legs. Electricity crackled, and his body wouldn't obey him anymore. Neji tottered and fell toward the ground. _Ninpo: Earth Shackling!_ The wires released his legs and traveled over his body before going back underground. Again they emerged and moved across his body only to dig back into the earth. In a few seconds, wires crisscrossed Neji's body and held him tightly against the ground with no room to move his arms for hand seals. Naruto finally stood, only to trail wire from his canisters down into two holes in the ground behind him. The misnamed ball of water splashed down behind Neji.

"Winner of the whole shebang, Whisker-chan!" he released the catch in the canisters with a chakra prod and let most of the work in retracting the wire be done by the spring mechanism. No one was making noise other than Anko, who was slapping him on the back and congratulating him loudly.

"Uh, it was fun?" the dam of grumbles broke at that point, and the senseis got together to hand the money over to Anko. As the other teams left, he thought he caught Asuma saying something unpleasant about hustlers. He had to wonder what exactly Anko had described the tournament as.

When they were alone, Anko asked, "So, did you fulfill your objective?"

"What do you mean Anko-chan?"

She scoffed, "Come on."

"That transparent huh?" he wondered while rubbing the back of his neck. A sigh slipped out. "I hope this will kick them into gear. Sasuke, Neji, and Kiba will definitely up their training. Lee will probably follow just because. I showed Tenten the problem with her weapon-centric philosophy. Ino got embarrassed by the 'annoying' Kiba, so she'll probably push her whole team. I'm hoping Sakura will think Ino is training to win over Uke-chan. No idea about that Sai kid. Shino will see the logic of his weakness, but I don't know what to do about Hinata." He rolled through his mental list.

"I think you've already done enough for today," she complimented. Her arm snaked through his and she started walking off, "Now, off to celebrate!"

"It's barely past noon. What are we even going to do?"

* * *

Night had fallen, and Naruto laid on his back in Anko's bed. A sheet was pulled partially up to help keep the heat they were losing to their sweat. Her body was plastered to Naruto's side.

"Well, I'd say that made winning that tourney worth it." Anko chuckled into the crook of his neck.

"You weren't too bad either Whiskers," she sighed contently before propping herself up to look into Naruto's eyes. "I know it was your first time, and you might get the feeling-"

"It's alright Anko-chan," he assured as his fingers danced softly down her naked back. "It was to scratch an itch and or relieve some physical and or mental stress. To be perfectly candid, I've never had a girlfriend before and would have no idea how to go about it in the first place. Plus, I respect you too much as my sensei and friend to try to push you into something."

"Alright, just so you know." She returned her head to the crook of his neck. "Also just so you know, we'll be doing this again."

"So, should I stay for breakfast or would that be awkward?"

"Can you cook?"

"Yep."

"Then you can stay over. Just don't go thinking I'm your wifey," she warned.

"Hm, it seems like I'd be the one cooking and cleaning while you would be getting expensive gifts and going out. Plus the kinky sex of course," he paused. "Yep, if anything you'd be my mistress."

"Shut up and go to sleep."

"Sure thing," he turned and gave the top of her head a kiss before shutting his eyes.

* * *

It had been almost a month since he'd officially become a genin, and, in Naruto's estimation, things seemed to be going pretty well. After ironing out his basics, Anko had helped him with her jonin level access to certain materials that he just couldn't get his hands on otherwise.

Three masked shinobi appeared, blocking his path out of the training grounds. He shielded his eyes against the setting sun at their backs. They wore the standard ANBU uniform, but their masks were blank.

"Danzo-sama would like to speak with you. Please come with us," the center ninja requested.

"Yeah, no." _Ninpo: Poison Mist._ Thick black smog erupted from Naruto's mouth as he flew through another three hand seals and held the last, _Ninpo: Hidden Poison Mist. _The volume of poison mist increased exponentially, rolling outward across the ground like a thunder cloud. A pillar of green fire spouted from the mist, and Naruto was gone.

"Hey there Old Man," Naruto greeted the slightly startled Hokage.

"Hello Naruto-kun, is there something I can do for you?" Sarutobi took the interruption for all it was worth and began filling his pipe in lieu of finishing his work.

"Oh, nothing in particular. I just wanted to come by and see how everything's going." _I'll have to lay low for a bit. Wouldn't want the old war hawk getting the location of my base._ _What a surprising early move._

_**You're going to have to take care of him sooner rather than later.**_

_Yeah, but how? He's as paranoid as they come. Not to mention the fact that he was considered __for Hokage._

_**I'll think on it while I'm napping.**_

He lit his pipe with a minor fire jutsu and took a drag before turning serious, "Do you think Team Anko is ready for an A-Rank mission if I paired you with one of my ANBU?"

"What happened?"

"Team Seven had a C-Rank escort mission," he tossed the folder across his desk. "They encountered a chunin team from a new village. Apparently the client neglected to inform us that his home had been taken over by a multi-millionaire tyrant, and he was in opposition. By Kakashi's own admission, they only survived because of the arrogance of their opponents."

"Kakashi got nailed trying to protect his team didn't he?"

Sarutobi nodded, "They are currently recuperating at the client's home. All members of the team sustained some amount of injury." The Hokage took a deep pull from his pipe and let the smoke trickle out of his mouth slowly. "Wave Country could be a nice trading hub for us if we could gain the native's good will."

_**Take it**_, Kurama advised. _**Wave is not too far from Uzushio, we could easily find a reason to stick around for an extra couple days after the completion of the mission**_.

"Strictly back up or are we getting an assassination mission too?"

"Does that mean you think you're able?"

"You'll have to summon Anko for that, but I'm not against it."

Ten minutes passed before Anko made her way into the office with a serious expression on her face. "Hokage-sama, the ANBU said it was urgent?"

"Yes, I have a mission for your team and," he waved his hand and an ANBU with a lizard mask appeared, "Lizard here. Team Seven is requesting back up for a C-Rank turned B-Rank, possibly A-Rank." Naruto handed her the dossier. "Primary mission is to reinforce Team Seven and give assistance, Lizard is certified in field medicine. Your secondary objective is the elimination of one Gato of Gato Shipping Co. If this condition is satisfied you will be awarded additional A-Rank pay."

Anko whistled. "So Kakashi has no idea who this new village is?" she asked, flipping through the pages in the folder.

"No, only that their symbol is a musical note. There have been mutterings of a new village sprouting up in Rice Country lately however, this may be it."

Anko didn't even seem to consider not taking the mission, "We accept Hokage-sama!" She handed the folder back to the Hokage and turned to Naruto, "Alright Whiskers, be ready to move out in an hour at the gates."

* * *

A/N: Next chapter the Wave Arc begins! Unfortunately, it seemed that I had to tackle it in some way, so that I could properly show off some of the ripples due to the death of Obito. Hopefully if you really hate the Wave Arc you'll stick around and see if you can stomach it my way.

Naruto's Mentality: If you're concerned that Naruto isn't acting like a thirteen year old, it's because he isn't, at least not mentally. Through blatant abuse of shadow clones and nightly training in his mindscape with Kurama, his mental aging has accelerated just like his physical body.

For those worried about balance, Naruto isn't suddenly god-like. He's had access to a Hokage's private study, and has pretty much taught himself, which means he does some things oddly and unexpectedly. The other rookies haven't really had the time to get into learning jutsu, so they're pretty much just stuck with taijutsu and weapons or the occasional clan technique. Sai could have given Naruto a good fight if he didn't have to hide his ROOT skills. He really just exploited their weaknesses.

I used a randomizer to pick the fights and they ended up with a surprising amount of canon match ups: Sasuke & Lee, Hinata & Neji, Tenten & a wind user, Shikamaru & a girl, Neji & Naruto.


	4. Baggage

Disclaimer: I don't own Naruto.

A/N: Man, this chapter was like pulling teeth.

Updates will slow a bit. I've committed myself to at least one update a week, probably more any given week, but I'd rather this didn't start feeling like a job since I do it for my own enjoyment.

After the chapter, I've included my thoughts on how this ended up going.

Enjoy.

"Speaking."

_Naruto's thoughts._

_**Kyuubi's**_**_ thoughts_.**_  
_

* * *

The group of three stood outside a large two-story house. A wooden ramp connected the stilt house with land a short way away. Naruto couldn't see any glaring defects on the outside of the home, which was more than he could say for the part of the town they passed through on the way to the client's house. Then again, the mist everywhere made it hard to find any semblance of clearly lit viewing opportunities. Anko, at the tip of their wedge as befitting her position of team leader, knocked on the door confidently.

A minute passed before an attractive young woman cracked the door open. Her eyes darted to the symbol on Anko's forehead protector, and she heaved a sigh of relief. She slid the door open completely and ushered them in with a bow.

"Hello, my name is Tsunami. Hatake-san said someone would be arriving soon." Naruto snorted in his head, soon was a relative term—the trip had taken twelve hours, even with them pushing at full speed excepting their few brief rest stops.

"Anko Mitarashi, if you could, please lead us to the other team."

"Of course, they are upstairs. Please follow me," Tsunami lead them through a spacious, minimally furnished dining room toward a staircase.

The room they were lead to appeared to be a spare, it was completely empty except for the futons Team Seven rested on. Naruto mentally frowned at the scene before him. Kakashi laid on his back, a makeshift sling supporting his left arm, and his bare torso wrapped tightly in bandages. Sasuke looked better off, he only had bandages wrapping around his arms at irregular intervals and one square bandage between his eyes. Sakura had no outward injuries, but was still confined to a futon like the rest of them.

"Kakashi's the priority Lizard, get him well enough to talk to us at least." Anko turned to Naruto as the ANBU knelt next to the unmoving form of the Copy Nin. "I don't like this at all."

"Yeah, did you notice we're missing something?"

"Maybe he's guarding the client, it's already ten and I didn't see him on the way in." The conversation dropped off, as they couldn't do anything until they knew the breadth of the situation. Not to mention the oppressive aura filling the house, something reminiscent of a hospital waiting room outside the critical ward.

Ten minutes later, Kakashi was sitting up with his back against a wall. His porn was conspicuous by its absence. Naruto imagined he could see his mouth set in a firm line under his mask. Lizard moved to Sakura with orders to keep the genin asleep as long as it was practical.

"We need the story to get a plan going Kakashi," Anko broke the silence. "Keeping it inside isn't going to change what happened."

He sighed and passed his right hand through his spiky silver hair. "We were only a mile or two out from here when we ran into an ambush. Four of them, they all had the same musical note on their forehead protectors. Sasuke rushed in, and a six armed ninja fired a weird gold arrow at him," his eye twisted shut and the joints of his hand popped as he clenched it into a fist. "Sai moved in front of him and managed to deflect the arrow, but the girl must have cast a genjutsu on him." Kakashi looked down and took a deep breath. "I barely realized there was a second arrow, but the moment I took my attention away from the others, the fat one caught me unaware in the side. Sai didn't even stand a chance, it pierced his head far enough to give Sasuke a superficial wound."

Lizard chose that moment to interject, Kakashi looked like he needed it anyway, "Sakura has a fractured skull, but that's fairly simply to fix. The problem is the hit wrenched her neck and spine. I'm not sure of the extent of the damage, she needs a hospital as soon as we can manage it." Anko nodded, and the ANBU moved to Sasuke.

"I managed to use a shadow clone as a distraction and killed the six armed one," he continued. "After Sasuke broke out of his shock he managed to land a few kunai on the big guy. The last guy seemed to be their ninjutsu specialist. He used mostly fire jutsu in combination with a whip, that's where Sasuke got the wounds on his arms." He tilted his head toward Sakura, "She tried to protect Tazuna, but the big guy got her with a good shot. I managed to trap him before he could kill Tazuna, but the girl sounded a retreat just as I was about to kill him. I thought it better to get my team here rather than pursue."

_This is cluster fuck, Kakashi didn't report anything about losing someone._

"The Uchiha only has superficial wounds, but I can't speak to any mental damage he may have incurred," Lizard informed them.

"What about the Cyclops?" Anko asked.

"Hatake-san won't be able to fight at full strength for at least two weeks."

"Fuck," Anko sighed. "Naruto," she tilted her head toward the door. Outside, they both stayed silent to process the situation. "We're going to have to take out Gato as soon as we can."

"You think the team will leave even though they lost a member?"

"We're going to have to hope so, 'cause, even with Lizard, they're sitting ducks here."

Memories flowed from a dispelled clone, and he informed her, "Tazuna's working at the bridge. I left a couple clones there to see him home."

"How much rest do you need to do recon?"

"None if it's light."

"Send 'em out. We're looking for the location of and information on Gato's headquarters here and anyone who could give us that information." Waves of shadow clones popped into existence only to henge into random people or animals and head toward the town. "I'm going to head out and see what I can find on my own." She snatched a squirrel clone and dropped it on her shoulder. "Stay here. I'll let you know if I find anything." Naruto just gave a nod as she walked away.

Naruto jumped up to the roof, deciding to wait out her return instead of resting.

_**It's time to go full out Naruto. You have to be prepared to use all of your tricks.**_

_You think they'll call for reinforcements?_

_**Depends if they were watching the client's house or not.**_

_I don't think I would really appreciate that. The ones here must be closer to jonin than genin if they fucked Team Seven up this much._ Footsteps sounded off the wooden roofing slats. Naruto turned his head to see Sasuke emerging from the second story window.

"What's our situation?" Sasuke asked after a few minutes of awkward silence.

"My Sensei and I are going to try to cut the problem out at the root. Hopefully, we won't have to fight after that."

Sasuke's body and fists tensed up as he replied, "I want to be there."

"I know," Naruto sighed. "We need you here though. As the only mobile member of Team Seven, you and Lizard have to be here defend your team and the family if the enemy decides to lash out."

"You don't understand," he urged. "I _have_ to be there."

Naruto shook his head, "You're too emotionally invested in this." He turned to look out at the water, as the next thing he was going to say would go over better without the emotional intimacy of looking Sasuke in the eyes, "Getting sloppy and getting killed won't repay your debt to him. You want to repay your debt?" he asked rhetorically. "Then do something important with your life that isn't centered around killing that brother of yours."

"What the hell do you know?" Sasuke asked angrily, lashing out at the only thing he could.

He paused a moment before answering, "My parents both died to protect me and Konoha only a few hours after I was born. When I was ten I found a letter that my father left me," Naruto's eyes threatened to mist over. "In it, he apologized for having to sacrifice himself and for letting my mother die, not that I saw a lot of ways for him to prevent it. He also told me that he knew I could be something great, and no matter what I did, they would be proud," Naruto's face remained placid, but the tears streaming down his cheeks couldn't lie. "The weight of their expectations hasn't gone away, but it has become more comfortable." Naruto gave Sasuke's shoulder a pat and left the roof to him.

* * *

Anko returned a few hours later to find Naruto on the porch, playing a game of shogi against a clone. She didn't look disheveled or even tired.

"I'm guessing you didn't find anything interesting after my clone dispelled?"

"A few things, nothing I could capitalize on," she commented, easing herself into one of the deck chairs.

"Well, would you guess that Gato is holed up on the outskirts of town in one of the few buildings that is in good repair?" Naruto asked, moving a piece.

"Arrogant prick."

"Makes it easier for us."

"Did you get a look inside?"

"Nope," Naruto sealed up the board and pieces as the clone dispelled. "From outside it looked like it was swarming though. However," he leaned toward her with a smile, "Gato likes to conduct his business from the top level, and he likes a view while he's doing it."

A malicious grin slipped across Anko's face, "We'll try tomorrow. We should be fully rested for it." She got to her feet, but stopped before entering the house, "I assume you sent more bird clones?" He simply nodded.

* * *

Naruto and his shadow clones stood atop the tower that was Gato's main office with his hair fluttering behind him; Anko stood next to him, her trench coat whipping out behind her dramatically. He had puzzled out most of Gato's schedule, and the diminutive leech was about to start in on his lunch.

"Now," Anko urged. They ran down the side of the building, sticking to the wall with the chakra on their feet. The whole structure shuddered as a concussive blast washed over the side opposite them. A window directly below them rattled loose and plummeted to the ground, destroying a cart and throwing shrapnel along the street. Smoke billowed out from the opening as they flipped down into the office.

The clearing smoke revealed Gato sitting stock still behind his desk. A big guy with orange hair, a tall skinny guy with a whip, and a red headed girl with glasses looked toward the hole on the other side of the office. As soon as they touched down inside the room, the girl whipped her head around and alerted her friends. Anko's kunais had already begun their flight, leaving one of the girl's cheeks deeply cut and one of Gato's hands stuck to his desk.

A burning whip wrapped around Naruto's ankle, and a giant fist was streaking toward his head. The fist smashed into a potted plant, launching broken shards and dirt out the window. _Wind Release: __Great Breakthrough!_ A powerful gust of wind tore across the room towards Orange Hair. His large hands closed around the metal window frame on either side of the hole. The jutsu slammed into him, denting the frame outwards, but his grip remained firm.

Naruto launched another with double the chakra. The windows on either side of Orange Hair blew out, the frame he was holding onto going with it. It ripped past him, and he started to tumble in the air to reduce to his momentum. A crater formed on the roof where he landed, before it collapsed completely.

_Thank god he couldn't use his hands, there's no way that killed him, and I don't really want to get into an all out fight._ Naruto's wire wrapped around Gato's neck. His head rolled away as the wind chakra infused wire sliced through. The red headed, supposed leader of the team lay on the ground scarcely breathing. Anko was making headway on the whip user, apparently wanting to draw out the fight instead of accomplish their mission.

"Gato's dead, your team leader's dead, and the orange haired one is picking rubble off himself three blocks away," Naruto began. "I suggest you take your leave with your remaining teammate and just cut your losses." Whippy turned to reply, only to have two conical weights flash through the hole in the wall. He seemed to sense them and dodged to the side, only to have his arms drop to the ground as a second set wrapped around his biceps and sliced through them like cheese. His scream echoed throughout the room, as bandages streaked from the real Naruto to wrap him up and push him into unconsciousness. The chakra coating his finger tip sliced through his bandages, so they could keep Whippy bound and from bleeding to death. Memories flooded in as the clones he left on the roof dispersed.

"Good job Whiskers," Anko complimented as she slapped a chakra restriction seal on the red hair and bound her. "Did you have to kill Gato?"

"He probably has a black book somewhere we can get the information from." _Hey Kurama, is my chakra ever going to be stable enough to use finesse genjutsu?_

Naruto could almost feel his smile as he replied, _**Yes, as soon as you release me it should be just fine.**_

_Not really the answer I wanted to hear._

Anko sealed Gato's head in a scroll and ordered, "Have you clones Shunshin our prisoners back to the house." Three clones poofed into existence, one by each prisoner and another by the window Orange Hair flew out of. The two prisoners disappeared in a poof of purple mist, and the third clone henged into a bird and launched out the window.

The pounding on the door into the office kept getting louder, finally prompting Naruto to comment, "Man, it's a good thing his door opens from the inside." Naruto paused in thought. "I wonder how he gets in everyday?"

"Bingo!" Naruto turned to see Anko shove aside Gato's desk. Set into the floor, under one of the legs was a square slab of metal around two feet across. She pulled a lever that rested between the metal container and the floor making the safe shudder before rising. It took nearly half a minute for all five feet of the safe to be above floor level.

"Wow, how incredibly impractical and nifty." Naruto moved to get a better view of Anko trying to break open the door.

"Damn, I can't hear the tumblers," she cursed, stepping away from the door.

"Can't we just brute force it open?"

"The door might lock up if we do anything too drastic, this safe actually looks fairly secure."

"And I can't just use wind chakra to cut off the top why?"

Anko palmed her face, "Get to it." Naruto pulled out a kukri, filled it with wind chakra, and lined up in a two handed stance. The metal screamed as the blade slashed through a quarter of the top. A few minutes of hacking and slashing allowed the top to be rolled back. He whipped out a storage scroll and summoned some clothes to seal up everything in the safe.

"Orange Hair is heading toward the mainland," Naruto informed after absorbing the memory. "How long did you figure Tazuna's bridge has before it's completed?"

"Three to four weeks, but we aren't staying for that." A clone poked Naruto in the face with a long, polished wooden case. He grabbed it and glared as the clone stuck out its tongue and got back to sealing. Anko snickered. "We'll stay for a few days at most to make sure Kakashi can use his arm. After that we've got to get Pinky and the prisoners back to Konoha."

_Shit, that gives us a day at most in Uzu._

_** I don't think we can make it this time, it would arouse suspicion we don't deserve or need.**_

"You going to see what's in that case or not?"

"Oh yeah, forgot I was holding it for a minute there." He set it on the desk and pulled off the lid only to be confused. "What the shit kind of sword is this?" The entire length was nearly five feet. Bandages wrapped around an incredibly narrow handle. Wire was wrapped around a hole at the pommel and seemed to disappear into the handle, only for another end of wire to re-emerge. _Is this kind of like my canisters?_ The blade was inexplicably narrow, though double sided. _Kurama you got anything on this?_

_**Sure don't.**_

"Looks weird enough to be right up your alley, plus it's even got your favorite toy attached," was Anko's only comment. Naruto sighed and sealed up the weapon.

He was about to retort before a stream of memories stopped him. _Not good._ "Anko, let's get back to the client's house." She looked at him oddly but nodded. As they leapt from the window, hundreds of clones poofed into existence and stuck themselves all over the tower with chakra. Once they were a few buildings away, Naruto exclaimed, "Ninpo: Great Clone Explosion!" The clones detonated in a wave instead of at the same time, completely destabilizing the structure. _Hopefully that'll take care of a lot of the possible members for roving gangs._

When they landed near Tazuna's house, Naruto grabbed Anko's arm before she could approach it. "We need to talk." She gave him a quick nod. "The guy with the whip had a curse seal."

Anko's eyes widened, and she was about to run toward the house. She stopped abruptly as she comprehended the entire message. "What do you mean had?" the lilt of her voice was decidedly dangerous.

"Something happened after he woke up."

"Can you not be all fucking cryptic with this?!"

Naruto sighed, "His seal was different than yours, the completed version." He didn't really know how the next part was going to go over, "It had a kill switch, but from what I could see, it was manual, not automatic." He took the moments she used to work out the implications to brace himself for the probable incoming onslaught.

"He was here! That fucking snake freak was here!" her eyes narrowed dangerously, though he kept his hand on her arm. "You fucking knew. You knew at the tower." Naruto nodded. To his surprise, her forehead thumped into his chest. "Why? You know what this means to me."

He didn't bother encircling her in a hug, to do so would acknowledge her moment of weakness, "He waited to activate it, which most probably means he was already leaving Wave. If he was here watching, neither of us sensed him, we wouldn't even be able to find him if he was still around Anko."

She nodded into his chest and asked, "And you thought if I found out I'd immediately want to search the area?"

"Yes," Naruto ignored the wetness seeping through his shirt, but spun them gently around so his back was facing Tazuna's house.

"I'm sorry," she apologized with something like, but definitely not, a sniffle. "Just give me a minute."

"Take all the time you need." Naruto turned his head to look out across the water as if contemplating something.

Lizard and Sasuke were drinking tea at the table when Naruto and Anko entered the house. They both looked up expectantly as the two sat down.

"How are Cyclops and Pinky doing?" Anko asked.

"Hatake-san is mending quicker than expected, and I've stabilized Haruno-san for travel," Lizard answered. "I also took a look at the female prisoner and took the liberty of removing the poison."

Anko nodded. "Our mission was successful. We'll talk with Tazuna later tonight. Unfortunately, we'll have to leave soon to bring Pinky to the hospital and the prisoner to Ibiki."

* * *

A few days after returning with the prisoner, Karin was her name as it turned out, and delivering Sakura to the hospital, Naruto headed toward the weapons shop that he knew Tenten's family owned. He sported a bit of a limp as he made his way down the street; Anko had wanted to apologize rather fervently for forcing him to "baby" her on the mission. Several hours ago, she had pretty much press ganged him into being the guinea pig for a new oral technique of hers—the Octopus. Things had not gone well. There was some tearing and some blood involved, and Naruto got out of there as fast as he could. He didn't want to be on the receiving end of another special technique apology. Octopi were forever tainted in his mind.

The bell above the door chimed as he walked in. Tenten didn't even look up from the magazine she was reading at the counter. Naruto idled, and walked around to make sure nothing new had made his load-out obsolete—nothing sparked his interest.

Naruto walked up to the counter and greeted the reading girl, "Yo Tenten, how's it going?"

"Oh, hey Naruto. Something you need?" Before he could answer, she added, "And don't think I've forgotten that you promised me a rematch."

"No worries, that's part of why I'm here," he assured her. "I just returned from a mission, so if you'd like some reimbursement for your sword, now's the time to hit me up." They'd been paid for the A-Rank assassination mission, but technically the altered protection contract wasn't fulfilled yet. There was a bonus involved for bringing in a body and a person most likely associated with Orochimaru, one of Konoha's greatest criminals. Of course, he'd also skimmed about three quarters of the capital in Gato's safe. Anko and he had delivered all the documents Wave would need to use Gato's bank accounts to Tazuna, plus most of the deeds for property he seized. Not really smart to keep all that in one place.

"Ah, don't worry about it," she waved her hand dismissively. "It was blunted and imperfect, pretty much only suited for training. What was the other part?"

"Eh, I found this weird sword on the mission, so I came to the best weapons expert I knew," Naruto grinned at her.

"Oh yeah? How many weapons experts do you know?" she wondered as he unsealed the wooden box.

"Lots?" Naruto lifted the lid off the case, "And here you go." _I really hope it's something awesome. I mean, why else would he have it in a nice box in a safe?_

The protective cloth she pulled aside dropped to the ground as Tenten's eyes widened, "Holy shit." With shaking hands, she picked up the narrow weapon.

"Is it that awesome?" Naruto wondered.

"You really don't know what this is?" she asked. Naruto cocked an amused eyebrow, as she seemed to be panting as she examined the sword.

_I knew she liked weapons, but this is kind of over the top._ "Nope," he answered cheerfully.

"This is Nuibari, one of the Seven Swords of the Mist."

"Seriously?" Naruto asked incredulously. _How the hell did Gato get his hands on one of the seven swords?_ "Well, this is awesome I guess." _How the fuck am I going to learn to use this weird lookin' thing?_ The thought of not using it hadn't even made an appearance on his mental stage. He belatedly realized Tenten barely registered anything he'd said after she'd taken it out of the case. "Allllright," Naruto gently took the weapon from her hands and set it in the case. "Let's put this away before you have to mop up," the box poofed away into one of his storage seals.

Her face flushed as she realized what he'd said, but determination filled her eyes. "What do you want for it?" she demanded.

"I think I'll keep it."

"I'm going to get that sword."

"Alright Ten-chan, I'll see you later I guess." The bell above the door rang, and Naruto was back on the street. He took a deep breath to cleanse the weirdness and sheer impossibility. Man, Tenten _really _loved weapons.

Naruto was kind of at a loss as to what to do for the rest of his day. He couldn't go back to his apartment until the consequences of Anko's experiment healed, because she'd definitely find him there. His parent's house was off limits, no one knew who he was yet—his trips back inside the house were rare, because the last thing he needed was to be accused of theft from a former Hokage. Seemed like his only option was his base or, as he sometimes liked to style it, his research lab. Never in front of Anko of course, she didn't even know he had it. A conscious decision on his part, Orochimaru had been the creator of the few secreted away complexes under Konoha.

As his feet kicked up dust on the way to his lab, he allowed his mind to wander. The only options he'd considered had been going to places that he solely occupied. He hadn't even considered visiting someone. Didn't he have any friends other than Anko? Sadness welled up, but it was crushed ruthlessly. He'd even stopped going to Ichiraku. _That_, wasn't a conscious decision, his visits had just tapered off. What his peer group's parents hadn't done to alienate him from his generation, the consequences due to the nature of his training had picked up. It would take time and energy to ingratiate himself with the ones he wanted to associate with.

He found himself in front of the door to a nondescript shop. The boards across the windows along with the faded sign proclaimed its financial death. Naruto wasn't sure why it'd closed, but its location on the edge of the slums was convenient enough for him. No sound issued from the hinges, even though everything else could stay in disrepair, a loud screeching noise wouldn't be very good for his need to be covert.

The deadbolt thumped into place. Shelves and a counter of rotting wood, peeling paint, dust, and trash were the things that greeted him from the inside of the building. He walked in the back room, trying to ignore the overwhelming bouquet of mold. Chakra flowed into the ball of his foot, pressed on a particular plank, and the deteriorating wooden floor seemingly dissolved into a metal trapdoor. Concrete steps descended into darkness. More chakra flowed into the trapdoor after it closed after him. It would be pretty odd to find a metal trap door in good repair in that place, not that there had been any evidence anyone other than him had been there in years. Seals lit up along the ceiling to guide his way to the labs.

At the end of the stairs, and after another seal covered metal door, he found himself in a large, concrete box of a room. Work tables lined the walls and ran through the center of the room. Interspersed among the wall tables were shelves of random books and scrolls pertinent to or related to his experiments. After reading through his parent's journals, his father's in particular, Naruto had become something of a nerd for jutsu theory and creation. Not to mention he sometimes needed a secluded place to test out new seals, that was in the room connected to his lab by a long enough hallway to make sure no tremors collapsed it. He walked over to a table near the center of the room, fully intending to expose some recent crazy ideas to his theoretical rigor.

"You've kept me waiting Naruto Uzumaki," a gravelly voice said from behind him.

_Fuck. Shit fucking wankbadger. I got sloppy, why'd I have to go so damn introspective on the way in here? Damn him and me._

_ **You're not dead yet.**_

"I don't like to be kept waiting, but I suppose it is understandable, given the fact that you had no idea I would be visiting," the voice continued. Naruto turned around to see an extremely short, hunched over man with a brown traveling cloak covering his body. His black hair was pulled into corn rows, and a brown veil covered everything below the bridge of his nose.

"What do you want?"

"I've come to you to expand my collection."

* * *

A/N the Latter: I'd intended for this chapter to be a big ole battle, but it somehow turned into an emotion-fest and Naruto and Anko ended up ghosting through the fight easily. Of course, Team Seven paid the price of their easy battle.

Once I realized that Jirobo couldn't use like any of his jutsu in a building because they were incredibly destructive and that Karin, even in Shipudden, was pretty much equivalent to pre-timeskip Sakura, the organic ending seemed much more reasonable. Even Karin's chakra sensing (Mind's Eye of Kagura) is poorly developed enough in Shipudden that it can't be active all the time. Of course, they were all incredibly arrogant, so that helped out Naruto. Plus, they had to restrain their attacks since their client was sitting right there.

I may have to just start making OCs for them to go up against, so that they don't defeat everyone so terribly—until they meet some more hardcore enemies that is.

In conclusion, apologies about the lack of action. Also, don't worry about Naruto suddenly using Nuibari to its full efficiency. It's probably one of the harder swords to use, if you want to use it as something other than a well made rapier.


	5. Divergence

Disclaimer: I don't own Naruto.

A/N: I'm not real sure how to feel about this chapter. Mostly, it's just part of the transition to the chunin exams.

Just a note, I get all my background information from the Naruto wikia. Specifically, Orochimaru's had his hooks into Karin since she was a kid supposedly, so who knows why he had her in Kusa.

Pairings - The way I write is thus: plan out the big events or turning points and then connect them however it feels right. Romantic subplots, unfortunately, fall under the organic connection section. So, as soon as it feels reasonable to me Naruto will get a girlfriend, maybe two, possibly none; I'm not really sure yet. That's not to say Naruto won't be having sex with people, because that's one of the few things that keep him from going crazy and murdering everyone. With that said however, the chunin exams are coming up, and that means plenty of strange for Naruto to dip into.

Thanks for the reviews whether you liked it or not.

Sasori is OOC here, but still retains his inherent traits, because he hasn't spent six plus years in an organization of S-Rank missing-nin tasked with taking over the world. Does this mean Akatsuki doesn't exist? That will be explained later.

Enjoy.

"Verbose vocalizations."

_Naruto thinking._

_**Kyuubi thinking.**  
_

* * *

The specific emphasis the mystery man had put on "collection" evoked images of bugs pinned in glass cases or taxidermied animals hanging on the wall, a place Naruto didn't fancy himself. _Calm down, list our options. Escape? Doubtful. Fight? Doubtful. Persuasion? Only viable option right now._

"You seem to know my name, could I have yours?" _Real smooth Naruto, you definitely didn't sound stupid just now._

"Sasori, most people add 'of the Red Sands' however," he informed with an odd clacking noise. Naruto was fairly certain he'd never heard of him, maybe he came from Suna?

"And how can I help with this 'collection' of yours?" Naruto resisted the urge to let any "uh's" or "um's" slip into his speech.

"Let me explain," something shifted under his cloak, and a poof of smoke erupted next to him. When the smoke cleared, an incredibly tall form stood next to Sasori. The man had to be nearly six and a half feet tall and almost impossibly lanky. A lion's mane of dull blond hair framed a porcelain mask with the symbol for Kiri on the forehead. He wore a sleeveless black shirt, matching pants, and arm and leg warmers in pale blue. Bandages wrapped around his neck and draped over his shoulders. "This is part of my collection, Kushimaru Kuriarare." _That's not normal. What the hell kind of collection has ambulatory people in it?_ "Ask."

"What is your collection?" Naruto wondered hesitantly.

"I'm the prodigy of a dying art Uzumaki. My collection is simply representative of my contributions to it."

_Well that wasn't very informative. Rushing him is probably a bad idea, but do I really have to listen to speeches _and _be killed?_ He elected to remain quiet and wait for the odd man to finish.

"I am a puppeteer, I have been for almost thirty years. During that time, I discovered a method to preserve the Kekkei Genkai and chakra pathways of the dead." His speech became more frantic and passionate. "This is but one of my forty three human puppets, and you have something that belongs to him."

Naruto felt a twinge of disgust at Sasori's admission, but as he considered the idea, with the proper constraints, it didn't seem that bad. He wondered if he would be more disgusted if he'd had a family. Innumerable incidents trailed in his mind, all of them how he didn't quite carry the same mores as everyone else his age—occasionally he just wouldn't know something. Nursery rhymes were a good example. "What is that?"

"Nuibari." Everything clicked, the Kiri symbol, why he was included in a collection of Kekkei Genkai, he was one of the Seven Swordsman.

_How did he know I have it? It's been less than a week since I got it._ Naruto unsealed the sword, but had to ask, "How did you know I have it?" He set the polished box on the table between them.

"The same way I infiltrated Konoha and stand before you, I am a spymaster." Kushimaru stepped forward but didn't take the box. Instead, he pulled out two scrolls and set them across from the weapon. One of them was large, the other was normal sized. "I had fully intended to simply kill you and take the weapon, but when I arrived in this place, I realized we were too similar for me to snuff you out. Some of your ideas are quite impressive for a boy of thirteen." The lanky puppet laid another scroll between the two others. Naruto wasn't sure how to feel about the idea of a missing-nin, who made corpses into puppets, thinking they were similar. "Since I am not killing you, I refuse to be indebted toward you, as that sword is quite valuable. Therefore, I will give you a choice, information or power?"

_Okay, so what are the chances that this is some sort of test? Let's see, creepy guy who gets elbow deep in corpses waits in the dark for me to arrive, tells me he was planning on killing me, claims his art is dying, says I'm similar._ _Definitely a test._ Naruto's face scrunched up in concentration. _Wait, why do I have two choices if there's three scrolls?_ "Information," he gambled.

"Good. Information is both, take all three scrolls for the sword." Kushimaru took Nuibari out of the box and stepped back with Sasori.

"If I'd said power?"

"Then we wouldn't have been so similar would we?"

"What are these?"

"Did you know that your Hokage wishes to promote you to chunin based on your efforts during your last mission?" Naruto's mouth dropped open slightly, it'd been in his plans to try to be promoted before the exams, but he'd had no idea it would be so easy. Guilty consciences worked wonders it seemed. "During peacetime in your village however, he needs support from the shinobi council. Danzo Shimura is throwing his political weight around to keep him from it."

"Why? I thought he wanted me as a weapon?"

"A weapon does not lead Uzumaki. One of those contains the location of an abandoned base that was once used by Orochimaru. The large one is a summoning contract for weasels. For reasons I cannot get into, they no longer accept me as their summoner. The last is a collection of notes from my beginning days as a puppeteer." He was completely floored. What was Sasori offering him exactly? "If you ever find your jutsu research a bore, take a look. I believe you'll enjoy it." Kushimaru disappeared in a poof of smoke, and Sasori started to hobble toward the stairs. "Show me something interesting at the chunin exams Uzumaki, I'll be watching."

Minutes ticked by and Naruto was frozen in shock, even after Sasori left. "What the hell just happened?"

* * *

Anko rolled her hips a final time before collapsing on his chest with a moan. The only sound in her bedroom for a few moments was their labored breathing.

"Not that I'm complaining," she explained with a smirk, "but I didn't think I'd see you so soon after this morning," embarrassment colored her already heated cheeks.

"I've had a weird day, and the least of it was the Octopus." Anko made a vague sound of interest into his chest. He almost laughed at what he thought her reaction would be. "Well, I found out that sword I found was Nuibari, one of the Seven Swords of the Mist." Naruto felt her go still but continued, "After that Sasori of the Red Sands traded me information and a summoning contract for it after he decided not to kill me outright. I'm pretty sure he sees me as a possible colleague, which is a little disconcerting. Then I walked around aimlessly for an hour or two and came here to hopefully get both heads right." She lifted herself up to look him in the eyes with a completely blank expression. He did laugh at that, loudly.

"You're shitting me." Naruto shook his head as he regained his air. "What information?"

"Lots," he teased with a grin. Suddenly he felt the cold metal tip of a kunai on his neck. "Where'd you even get that? It can't be safe." It pressed a little harder. "Fine, fine." The cold disappeared, but was replaced by a warm trickle. "You're so rough with me sometimes."

"Only 'cause you can take it," she defended. Her tongue ran across his neck to clear away the blood, "Plus you're a quick healer, now tell me."

Naruto laid everything out for her, excluding where they met and his apparent ease at the thought of using human corpses as tools.

"I can't help but think he knows more than what he told you," she commented with a frown.

"Well I'd say that was a given, what with how he was claiming to be a spymaster and stuff."

She delivered an elbow to his ribs, "Quit being so annoying. You know what I mean. He wouldn't see you in the exams if your promotion went through."

"Aren't the chunin exams just one big spectacle anyway? I mean wouldn't they just make me go through them, since I'm the right age, so Konoha could look better?"

"Maybe," she shook whatever thoughts were in her head away for the moment. "I'm going to have to teach you to summon later, probably while we're investigating the Orochimaru tip."

"Sounds like a plan," Naruto murmured.

"And you probably need me to come up with some reason for Hokage-sama to issue us a mission out there without revealing the whole famous sword and missing-nin development?" He nodded. "I might need a little extra persuasion to lie to the Hokage like that," she purred.

Naruto flipped her over on her back, "Lucky for both of us I've got a silver tongue."

* * *

Naruto, Anko, and five others landed next to a small hill that was cleared of trees. They were only a few miles outside of Otafuku Gai. After about a week of pussy footing, they'd managed to bring a reasonable excuse to the Hokage to explore Sasori's information. It was fairly simple, the prisoners had said something seemingly innocuous on the way back to Konoha, and they had only just realized what it may have meant. Anko had lobbied to go as Orochimaru's apprentice, so Naruto was able to tag along as well. Due its nature as a recon mission, the Hokage had given them a temporary team: Hana Inuzuka and Neji Hyuuga. Hana was a medic as well as a tracker, and Neji's team was on leave after a C-Rank for another week or so. He wasn't sure why Neji had volunteered.

"So, plan?" Naruto asked.

"Neji can you give us a picture with the Byakugan?" Anko wondered.

"Give me a moment," veins running from the side of his eye to his temple bulged. "The part of the complex I can see appears to be abandoned. There are three levels, but each level is quite expansive."

"Don't worry about that for now. Can you find an entrance?"

"Yes, follow me."

"Hana, once we get up there I'll need you to check for recent activity," Hana and her three partners nodded.

Neji led them to a different section of forest surrounding the hill and pointed out a stump that looked like it'd had its tree snapped off, "It's under there."

"Naruto, send a clone over there to open it up before Hana investigates." Another Naruto poofed into existence and approached the hidden entrance. It flipped up and over without a problem. The barrage of kunai and shuriken was a bit more of one. The projectiles thudded into the trees behind the cloud of smoke that used to be a clone. "Alright, seems safe." Hana and the triplets descended only slightly into the staircase before returning to the surface and confer with each other.

"As far as we can tell it's been abandoned for a few weeks at least," the dogs each gave a short bark in confirmation.

"Alright Naruto, clone abuse," Anko ordered. Neji and Hana looked at them curiously, but Naruto gave a long suffering sigh.

Hundreds of Narutos poofed into existence around them, "Alright! You know the drill, standard cautious exploration!" Naruto ordered with a yell. Clones paired up and entered the hole with a minute between them. He sat down in the lotus position and closed his eyes. "Settle in, it's going to be a minute."

An hour later Naruto's face twisted weirdly, "Huh." His brow furrowed. "What the fuck?" he wondered under his breath.

"What's going on down there?" Anko was quickly on full alert.

"One of the clones tripped a trap that was connected to a stasis seal. We've got incoming," Naruto jumped up. The far edge of the clearing rumbled, and the dirt began to shake loosely. "Lightning wolf things. They have scales instead of fur and can regenerate limbs at least." Dirt flew into the air followed by a few Naruto clones who dispelled in mid air. Eight of the wolf things jumped out of the hole and quickly sighted them. Horns arced forward, above and on either side of their head. Their bodies were canine, but the scales that covered them seemed to be super sized, overlapping like armor plating.

Shadow clones came into existence between Naruto and his team. An arc of clones formed a wall aiming at the wolves. Another burst of chakra and more clones appeared standing on the shoulders of the bottom row. The real Naruto knelt down in front of the two tiered wall, only to lift and drop his arm toward the wolves. Globes of murky black liquid the size of Naruto's head converged on the group of wolves. All but one dodged the poison effortlessly, and they began their assault while their comrade writhed on the ground. Real Naruto flipped behind the wall just as the second level leapt from their perch toward the oncoming monsters. Gusts of wind erupted from the mouths of the first level, thrusting the kukri wielding upper level toward their objective at breakneck speed. The bottom group ran toward the monsters just as they scythed through the first wave like grain. Only one fell under the assault of both waves, and the remaining zigzagged toward them in intermittent bursts of speed.

Even though some chakra came back to him from popped clones, it was still a work out funneling that energy, and Naruto's breath was coming a little harder. "Oh yeah, they're also crazy fast." The first wolf rushed him. He slashed upwards only to have the thing duck and turn toward the outside, bouncing his blade off its hardened scales at an oblique angle. Its head quickly bucked up, throwing a horn directly at his side. Only his Kyuubi sharpened reflexes stopped the sharp bone from penetrating deeper than an inch. His grunt turned into a quickly aborted scream as lightning chakra flowed into his wound. Naruto suddenly watched from twenty feet away as a clone took a pair of horns in the back meant for him.

_**You're going to need my chakra to make sure everyone gets out of this alive.**_

_No arguments here._ Naruto pulled at the fire locked in his core as he watched a wolf latch onto Anko's armor lined sleeve and tried not to wince as he saw something give as it bit down. It took a kunai to the eye for its arrogance. Neji was skillfully avoiding strikes thanks to the Byakugan, but it seemed as if the Gentle Fist wasn't very effective on the monsters. Hana and the triplets were having the best luck, probably because their tactics were similar. The triplets and the monsters harried each other back and forth while she attempted to deliver a killing blow when they seemingly had a monster pinned.

He attached a patch of bandage with chakra over the hole in his side while his nails and teeth lengthened. His spikier hair flew out behind him as he sprinted at a wolf attempting to flank Anko. It nearly disappeared from his blood red gaze as it noticed and appeared in front of him in a burst of speed. Naruto managed to latch his left hand onto one of its horns, but its momentum granted it a final pivot of its body. Blood splattered the grass as the monster ripped out the underside of his forearm. A roiling mass of wind and Kurama's chakra exploded out from the back of the animal in a cloud of gore. He pulled his right hand out of the thing's chest with a schlick. Its lifeless body tumbled away from a left-handed toss. Bandages obeyed his chakra and wrapped around the fist sized hole in his forearm.

Naruto touched his side and found the injury nearly gone. He turned toward the battle but nearly fell over from a sudden lack of balance. _Shit, I think it got the veins._

_**Channel as much chakra as you can to your arm! You're not going to have time to bleed out as soon as one of those things realizes you're having trouble moving!**_ Kurama urged.

He kept pumping chakra into his arm until a blue aura surrounded it. The level of chakra supercharged his healing, he could actually feel as the tissues knitted themselves back together. _This is what I get for relying on the wires and bandages, of course I'd find someone faster than me. How couldn't I? Stupid, stupid._ Naruto wished his team could retreat more effectively, there was no real reason for them to fight this fight. _I really need to up my combat skills, ambushes aren't always going to work, damn it._ One of Hana's partners ripped out the throat of one of the monsters. _Three left._ A wolf's body he hadn't noticed before laid near Neji. _Two I guess, I wonder how he did that._

When he could only find one of the remaining things, he dove to the side out of reflex, only taking a shallow gouge along the ribs from a horn. It skidded to a stop in front of him and turned to face the blades of winds streaking from Naruto's swinging arms. Scales fell to the ground, shaved off by each passing blade of wind. _Are you fucking kidding me?!_ Naruto raged. He touched the index and middle finger of each hand to his lips, _Ninpo: Poison Whip._ As they pulled back, black liquid ropes attached to his fingers fell out of his mouth. The monster neared, and a clone appeared sealessly behind it.

Suddenly, Naruto watched from behind the monster as his clone slammed his hands down and a three layered earth wall popped up in front of it. Pieces of earth scattered everywhere, and Naruto's whips wrapped around the back end of the stuck wolf. They probed under scales pushing the poison through its skin. He absorbed memories and stopped. Just beyond the fallen wall Naruto could see the canine head rolling free on the ground. _Why the fuck didn't I think of that before?!_ The others were corralling the last thing, so Naruto just rested his hands on his knees and waited for them to finish.

All told, their injuries weren't as bad as they could have been. Naruto had been the most severely injured, at least he would have been if he hadn't healed completely by the time they took stock. Everyone carried varying depth gouges from teeth and horns, but other than those wounds, only Anko had a clean fracture in her arm. Apparently, Naruto had been at quite the disadvantage compared to the others. He silently reaffirmed his pledge to properly learn more offensive skills that didn't rely on his stealth and the weaknesses of his enemies.

Everyone agreed to move away from the area and camp for the night to regain their lost energy before they made a decision on whether or not to go back into the base.

After all of them awoke from an uneventful night, they resolved to fully explore the base. Nothing exciting happened on the second day, and Naruto's clones had the glorious job of ferrying the leftover paperwork to the outside to be sealed up. Each of the clones had read the things they'd brought up before hand of course, and Naruto was making a reasonable amount of progress on evidence that would immediately help him once they delivered it to Konoha. There was leftover equipment, but it was either too big or too old to be properly salvaged. Maybe a different team could take the time it needed to scavenge useable parts.

* * *

The Hokage flipped through a folder Anko had handed him after the rest of their temporary team left the office. They'd advised the ANBU leave the office, so currently it was just the three of them.

"Why would these be left behind?" the Hokage wondered aloud.

"Hokage-sama," Anko began, "once you read through all of the documents, it seems that he reneged on the manpower that was supposed to be the payment." Naruto was quickly getting annoyed with all the circuitous language.

"In light of this evidence, there is only one course of action left open to me." The Hokage took a fresh scroll and began scribbling. After a few moments of contemplating the nearly complete document, he stamped the bottom of the paper. He held the paper out to Anko, "Take this directly to Ibiki and say nothing else about it."

"Of course Hokage-sama," Anko bowed.

* * *

Anko and Naruto returned to the Hokage's office not a week later. Waiting for them with the Hokage was a man above six feet tall with spiky white hair. He wore a green shirt and matching pants under a red vest. Mesh armor was visible at his wrists, ankles, and chest. The forehead protector he wore had horns and the symbol for oil on it. His arms were crossed loosely across his chest and he leaned against the wall near the window.

"Anko-chan, Naruto-kun, I have a long term mission for you. First, let me introduce you to your traveling companion." He waved his hand toward the man in the corner, "My former student Jiraiya."

Naruto smirked inwardly, "Must be pretty important if you're pairing us up with my godfather Old Man." Everyone was temporarily struck dumb. He laughed, "Too good, the look on your faces."

Jiraiya's mouth reconciled with his brain first, "You know? How long? How?"

"One night when I was ten, a ninja hunted me for a few hours through the streets of Konoha," Anko and Jiraiya looked angry with flashes of sympathy, the Old Man just winced. "It just happened that I bled all over a blood seal on the gate of my parent's house. I found letters my father left for me and my parent's journals."

"Minato left behind letters?" Jiraiya nearly shouted before he realized what he'd given away.

"For me, yes."

"How did I not see it?" Anko wondered out loud.

"To be fair, most of the time I have a mask on."

Jiraiya cocked an eyebrow, "You see him without his mask on?" he asked a little giddily.

"Often," Anko replied with a leer. "He's very advanced for his age."

The Hokage coughed into his hand, "I believe we're getting off topic. Naruto-kun, why didn't you tell me when you found out?"

He shrugged, "You already knew and didn't tell me. What would it have changed?"

Naruto couldn't quite catch the emotion that flooded the Hokage's face before he buried it. "I've recently come to the realization that I've grown too old for this job. Jiraiya and Team Anko are to find Tsunade Senju of the Sannin and order her to return to Konoha to take up the mantle of Hokage," he tossed a scroll to Jiraiya. "While searching for Tsunade, Jiraiya is to test Naruto for a possible promotion to chunin."

"Meet me at the gate in the morning at nine," Jiraiya called back as he jumped out the window.

"We'll talk when we get back if you want Old Man," Naruto assured as he walked out the door.

* * *

Two weeks had passed as the group meandered through every gambling den in Fire Country. They found themselves back in Tanzaku Gai after their less than fruitful searching.

"Alright old man, we haven't had any time to ourselves, so we're going to go get a hotel room and probably not come out for a day or two," Naruto informed. "Later," he waved as they walked away.

"Oi brat! At least tell me the name of the hotel."

"You're a spymaster, figure it out." Naruto and Jiraiya's relationship hadn't exactly proceeded smoothly during their trip together. He felt that there was little excuse his godfather could make for not being there for him. It wasn't that he was incredibly angry with him, he'd had years to work that out of his system, but he just didn't want to get invested in someone who, apparently, thought so little of him.

One of the things that rankled him most was the fact that he treated everything like it was Naruto's privilege to have it handed down to him by the aging Sannin. Of course, the fact that he'd refused the toad contract temporarily had thrown him into paroxysms. He hadn't signed with the weasels either, it just wasn't prudent. Naruto couldn't figure out what the real reason was for Sasori to gift him the contract and the other information. The sword was easily attained by killing him, and he doubted the puppeteer had any compunction against it given his special collection. His information had been good, but that could just be a part of his calculated ploy. A sigh burst out of his mouth. Unfortunately, it seemed he'd have to talk to his godfather about what summoning contracts could do, since Anko didn't seem to have an answer on the level of danger present. Maybe he really just wanted more strong puppeteers?

"Quit worrying about everything for now," Anko advised, breaking his train of thought, as they walked up to to the hotel's desk. She had taken the omission of his parentage surprisingly well, he'd barely been stabbed at all. They lined up behind the black haired woman who was currently negotiating with the hotel staff. After another few minutes of conversation, the woman walked off toward the rooms, clutching a pig against her black clad torso.

"Damn it, our luck can't possibly be that bad can it?"

Anko pulled out a picture of Tsunade and her apprentice, "Apparently it can be."

"We could just, you know, take our time?" Naruto ventured.

"The sooner we finish this up the sooner we're back in Konoha." A mischievous smirk settled across her face, "You know, I've been telling my friend about the wonders of clones. I've been thinking about inviting her to relieve some of her tension, and since we're going to be _so_ stressed by the time we get back, maybe it's the right time."

"You don't have to bait with me with sex all the time Anko-chan, it's a bit of a disservice to you. Not to say I'm not going to enjoy it," he finished with a wink. A shadow clone poofed into existence and walked out the front door. "Alright, let's go beat some bushes." They walked quickly after the woman.

They caught up to her in a different hallway, and Anko called, "Shizune-san," Anko tapped her forehead protector before saying, "we need to talk." The black haired woman looked panicked for a moment but settled down.

She sighed an admitted, "Tsunade-sama is currently out. Please come in," Shizune gestured toward the door she was in front of. Their room was actually fairly posh, there was even a full kitchen and table. "Can I get you some tea?" she wondered as Anko and Naruto took a seat on a couch in the living area.

"Sure," Anko replied.

The tray slid onto the table between them. "What is it that you want, umm?"

"Anko Mitarashi," she sipped her tea. "The Hokage has ordered Tsunade-sama's return."

"I'm afraid that my master won't be very amenable to that."

"You must be very loyal to her to drug the both of us," Naruto commented. Shizune's eyes widened slightly. "I'm afraid you'll find that neither of us has much trouble with poisons."

"You realize that this constitutes assault on a fellow ninja of Konoha, as well as willfully obstructing a mission. Naruto and I would be completely within our rights to arrest you and bring you to Konoha to stand trial."

"You have to understand Tsunade-sama has so many painful memories there," Shizune attempted.

"Yeah that doesn't really fly." Naruto pointed at Anko, "Former apprentice of Orochimaru." He pointed to himself, "Orphaned pariah of Konoha." Memories flowed into him. "Looks like your master is already back. She'll be joining us in just a minute."

"Please, just try to be gentle with her." The door of the room opened to admit a blond haired woman who was a few inches shorter than Shizune. Her hair was held back in long pigtails and she wore dark pants and a gray shirt with a green jacket over it. A diamond tattoo sat in the middle of her forehead and was a dead giveaway. Naruto had to admit, she looked good for someone in her fifties.

"Shizune, what are Konoha-nin doing here?" she demanded angrily.

"Not much cousin," Naruto answered, causing Tsunade's expression to drop.

"I don't have any family left," she snapped bitterly.

Naruto stood and bowed, "Naruto Uzumaki, third jinchuriki of the Kyuubi and your cousin through Mito, at your service."

"What do you mean third?" the master and apprentice asked in unison.

"Mito was the first, she was the real reason the First Hokage defeated Madara Uchiha. She sealed the Kyuubi into herself during that battle. The second was my mother, and I am the third and only public jinchuriki, the Hokage wasn't real forthcoming on how that happened." Naruto muttered the last part under his breath.

Tsunade grunted noncommittally, "Anko right?" she nodded. "It's been awhile, now what do you want?"

"Hokage-sama has ordered your return," Anko answered.

"Alright, Shizune pack up. We're leaving for Konoha tomorrow morning." A grin grew across Tsunade's face as everyone was rendered speechless. "I ran into the old pervert on the street. He convinced me to at least visit Sensei."

Naruto palmed his face, "So we could have just gotten a room."

Anko pulled him up off the couch, "Alright we'll be off then." Just before they left the room she informed, over her shoulder, "I'll have Naruto send a clone with our room number up. Either or both of you are welcome to join Naruto and I tonight," she finished with a lecherous grin. The door shut before they had time to react.

A ways down the hallway Naruto cocked an eyebrow, "Join us?"

"You're telling me you weren't impressed by that rack she was sporting? Plus, I need to know just how far her nickname goes, and that apprentice of hers," Anko practically shivered, "so innocent. Wouldn't you like us to be the ones to educate her?" Naruto just nodded along, he doubted they would show up if his father's journal was correct about Tsunade refusing Jiraiya for all those years after Dan. "And the added benefit of banging a future Hokage. Come on, not many can say that."

Naruto chuckled and shook his head. Sometimes it was tough to tell where the line between her public persona and her actual enthusiasm for sex was.

* * *

A/N the Latter: Next time learn about the fate of Team Seven and the consequences of the Hokage's order. Does Sasori have something nefarious planned for Naruto? How did Jiraiya convince Tsunade to return?

Probably one or two more chapters to go before the actual exams start.

I don't know if anyone cares, but the reason those monsters aren't running around murdering everyone is that they were fatally unstable. There's more than one reason they were held in a stasis seal. Naruto won't be in a position to know that, and it would bother me so I figured I'd drop the dime.


	6. Loss

Disclaimer: I don't own Naruto.

A/N: First thing: I posted the first chapter of this story 11 days ago (20th) and I'm up to 5.7k views and 2.3k visitors, along with 80 followers and 54 favorites, I think all together a pretty good result for a first story. Granted, I have nothing to compare it to, but it seems awesome to me. So, thanks for checking out my story and sticking with it, it really warms the cockles of my heart.

Pairings and What Not!?: I threw up a poll in my profile (it's at the top) about women Naruto is going to run into in the future. It's just to gauge interest on the pairings. The one that wins won't necessarily be a love interest.

**A warning:** The mission in this chapter involves violence against children, the actions aren't onscreen, but you do see the results. It isn't incredibly descriptive, but the level of gruesomeness is up there. It's only a paragraph, so marking it out would seem weird. I'll say just skip the paragraph when they enter the first room if you're worried.

Other than that, Naruto gets to spend some time in Konoha and catch up with the people he's been missing lately.

Enjoy.

"Conversing."

_Naruto thinking._

_**Kyuubi thinking.**  
_

* * *

Naruto parried a meaty fist with the flat of his hand. He picked up his leg and turned it to the outside, only for a kick, meant for his thigh, to drive into his shin with a meaty thud. Another fist flew toward his face, but he tipped forward and landed next to his opponent on his formerly raised leg. With his hand firmly shackled around the wrist of the arm that shot past his head, wind chakra erupted from a tenketsu on the back of his arm, above the elbow, and his left fist crunched in the man's floating ribs multiple times, at a slightly upward angle, in rapid succession. He jumped away as his opponent's cigarette dropped from his mouth.

"I swear, if I ever meet another ninja who actually values utility over flashiness I may just kiss him or her on the mouth," Naruto complained as his opponent was on his knees coughing and trying to get his breath back. Asuma's taijutsu was completely dependent on using wind chakra coated trench knives, and the only time he attacked something other than the head or chest was when he used kicks to try to set those shots up. It wasn't that Naruto was better than Asuma in taijutsu, the opposite was actually true, but he entered into the fight angry, arrogant, and without the ability to use his weapons, since one slip up could lead to Naruto's death. There was also the extra boost Naruto got for having a little of Kurama's chakra always circulating in him; he was faster than most chunin and slower than most jonin, but his reflexes were incredibly quick.

The bandages he wrapped around his head quickly began absorbing the blood streaming from the cut across his eyebrow. Just because Asuma's style was flashy didn't mean he could dodge them all. He was sure without his extra fast healing he'd have been full of bruises quite soon. They hadn't really used much chakra and no ninjutsu, that could put one or both of them in a lot of hot water.

_**I think you should name that last move something utterly ridiculous.**_ Kurama hmmed to himself for a few seconds, _**How about something like 'Uzumaki Super Cyclone Punch!'**_

_I think I might be more partial to something like 'Uzumaki Fist of Death Technique, Number Thirteen: Sledgehammer Rocket!'_

Naruto could picture Kurama nodding sagely, _**Why thirteen though?**_

_It's unlucky?_

_**Of course, of course.**_

"Are you done with this foolishness now Asuma-san?" He took a moment to answer. Ah, it's hard to dislike a good shot to the liver for debilitation.

"Fuck you, you little bastard. Don't talk like you're better than me," he huffed out.

"Well, apparently I am, 'cause she keeps coming back even without Anko-chan," Naruto couldn't resist the jab. Anko had made good on her promise of adding her friend after they'd returned with Tsunade, and Kurenai had, surprisingly, taken to Naruto like a fish to water. She'd even come around by her lonesome to relieve her stress. As far as he knew, the stress was actually over her on again off again relationship with Asuma; well, she also had that genin team that seemed to be full of conflicting personalities. He wasn't sure how to feel about having Kurenai without Anko there. There was no denying that he, despite all the promises they'd made, was attached to Anko. She had encouraged him to enjoy himself with Kurenai, but there was a nagging something that bothered him about the situation. "For future reference, the little man in the boat is right here," Naruto made a V with his fingers and pointed to the middle of the top of the V. Giving a suggestive lick to the empty space, he turned and walked away.

Asuma hadn't taken the fact that Kurenai was currently seeing Naruto very well, even though they weren't dating. The occasional lunch with Anko and him was the most time they spent together outside of a bedroom. He wasn't surprised that Asuma was the possessive type, he'd apparently thrown some sort of tantrum and ran away to join the Twelve Guardians, that just didn't speak well to his personality.

It was a lucky break to down Asuma, pretty much only due to his cheating via his healing ability. Of course, the fact that he'd had to study medicine to get his poison jutsus to work was definitely a boon to his taijutsu. Naruto had been torn on whether or not to engage him, but after three weeks of snide comments it was just too much. No doubt Asuma would be that much more careful and pissed off next time they met.

Minutes later, walking down the street, Naruto ran into the person vying for the position of most annoying person with Asuma.

"Hey Naruto!" Tenten yelled and wave as she locked onto his presence immediately.

"Yo, Tenten," he was surprised there wasn't a dust cloud behind her with the speed she shot up to him.

"So, how about a spar?" she asked eagerly, practically bouncing up and down on the balls of her feet.

"I already told you," he began with a sigh, "Kiri paid me an exorbitant amount of ryo for the sword. I don't have it anymore." Her eyes narrowed dangerously before they were drawn away by the hawk landing on Naruto's arm. He unrolled the message and said, "Sorry, looks like I've got a mission. We'll have to pick this up later." Without waiting for her to reply, he disappeared in a shunshin.

Naruto stood horizontally on the outside wall of Hokage tower as he assimilated the memories from his hawk clone. How bad was it that he had to prepare that kind of escape in the first place? He was supposed to show up at the Hokage's office sometime in the next day or so, so it wasn't a complete lie.

His feet nearly silently touched the floor of the Hokage's office after a quick swing through the window. Tsunade sat behind the desk, the Hokage in all but name. The Third looked through paperwork off to the side of the desk. He was the only elder left after the house cleaning they'd been through. A few days after Tsunade had arrived, the entire village was in an uproar as Danzo Shimura had mysteriously fallen into a coma. Shortly after that, the previous Elders, Homura Mitokado and Koharu Utatane, had been held on suspicion of treason. All three were executed in secret with Tsunade overseeing the act. She'd told him personally, apparently some of the treasonous plans revolved around him.

"What happened to your head?" she wondered after looking up from her stack of paperwork.

"Things with Asuma came to a head," Naruto paused and groaned inwardly, damn puns.

The elder Sarutobi looked up at that, "What is going on with Asuma?"

_I guess they still haven't worked out whatever happened between them even though he's been back in Konoha for almost a year._ "He and Kurenai are on the outs again. We've been seeing each other physically," Naruto coughed into his hand, "recently, and he didn't take the development very well."

"Nice one brat," Tsunade complimented with a bit of a leer. "Kurenai _and_ Anko huh? I'm a little disappointed I didn't take her up on her offer now."

"Never too late," he advised with a wink.

She fought the small blush that threatened to color her cheeks, "Anyway, I called you here for a few reasons. Your promotion has been approved." Tsunade unsealed a flak jacket and tossed it to him. "You don't have to wear it, but it's generally appropriate for formal events." He put it on, but left it unzipped. "Even though you're a chunin, we need to show off your strength at the next exams since we'll be hosting them," she pulled a scroll out of a drawer and tossed it to him. "In approximately three months time the exams will begin, and a month after that the finals will be held. You're going to have an undetermined amount of exhibition matches against chunin from other villages during the finals. That," Tsunade pointed at the scroll in his hands, "is a long-term C-Rank mission. You are to prepare to fight multiple matches in the same day, so that you will properly acquit yourself in front of our future clients."

"That's kind of a tall order. Those chunin will only be chunin by the barest technicality."

"That's why you're getting four months advanced notice and C-Rank pay every two weeks brat."

"What about regular missions?"

"Do whatever you want as long as we come out ahead in front of the clients." She made a shooing motion with her hand, "Now, get out of my office."

* * *

Later that day, he landed next to a person staring at the Memorial Stone.

"Kakashi," he greeted.

"Naruto." He turned to look at him, "I see you got promoted, congratulations."

"I came to ask after your team." Truth be told, Naruto was worried about the fate of Team Seven. From his father's journal, he knew Kakashi was a generally good person, but had already lost the other two members of his team, not to mention his sensei. Sasuke was a time bomb waiting to go off with all the trauma that had been inflicted on him, and Sakura wasn't really meant to be a ninja, at least not at the level of devotion she'd showed during her time at the academy.

Kakashi turned away, "Sakura woke up a few days ago, but she was placed in the reserves while she decides if being a ninja is something she wants to continue doing. Sasuke is training himself into the ground, though he's been talking about revenge less." Throughout his answer, Kakashi's voice was dull and flat.

"I doubt my father or Obito would approve of you spending so much time in front of this stone," Naruto commented offhandedly as he left.

* * *

Wind rippled through Naruto's hair as he sat atop the Hokage Monument. He watched as the village was bathed in the golden glow of the sunset. All day he had tried to find something productive to do, but his physical training was already finished for the day and the clones handled everything else. There was an underlying sense of anxiousness, and a nervous energy he felt the need to burn off. His senses tripped, and he felt someone someone arrive behind him.

"Tch, you're hard to find sometimes Whiskers," Anko complained as she draped herself over his shoulders.

"Anko," he began. His pulse quickened and he started to feel warm. Despite his logical stance on life, it didn't lessen the anxiety he felt at possibly destroying one of the closest relationships he had, but he knew that if he didn't get it out in the open, it would only fester into a more spectacular blow up. "I'm sorry. I've become attached to this, to you."

She was silent for a long moment before saying, "I know." Her arms wrapped around him a little tighter, "We lied to ourselves."

_We?_ He smiled at the sunset as cooling relief flooded his body, "What changes?"

Anko plopped herself down in his lap and cinched her arms around his neck, "Nothing."

"Hm?"

"I don't know about you, but I happen to enjoy training, fucking, and eating dango."

"What about Kurenai?"

She made a quarter turn, and leaned back into Naruto's chest, "To be honest, I was, and still am I suppose, mostly a lesbian. I wasn't planning on bringing you home after the tournament," she admitted a little sheepishly. "Now, don't get a big head thinking you turned me or anything, I'm just making an exception 'cause I like you."

Naruto snorted, "Are you seeing other women right now?"

"Other than the ones we've had a threesome with, no," she admitted quietly.

"How does that not make you at very least bisexual?"

"Just 'cause I'm getting my fill of cock right now doesn't mean anything," he snorted again, but neglected to say any more. "Anyway, I was Kurenai's stress reliever for the longest time, but she likes dick a lot more than pussy." Naruto was about to make a snide comment, but his breath caught in his throat as Anko ground her ass into his groin, "Quiet, still talking. I'm not looking for anyone else between you and anyone else we add, but Kurenai needs a little relief here and there. The only reason she keeps hooking up with you is 'cause I vouched for you and you let her dictate everything."

"So just keep goin' at it huh? To be honest, it's a lot more fun when you're there too."

"I know, but you're just going to have to suffer through it," she said, patting the side of his face.

Naruto sighed exaggeratedly, "The things I do for friends."

* * *

Team Anko was standing in the Hokage's office with mission scroll in hand. Anko handed it to Naruto after reading the details. He looked up from the scroll to see Anko and Tsunade waiting for his reaction with barely veiled amusement.

"You're serious?" Tsunade nodded and Anko failed to hold back her snickers. "Hey, this is your fault too Anko-chan. You're the one who introduced us." Naruto pinched the bridge of his nose. "You know this seems like the beginning of a bad joke. Why are you doing this to me?"

"As a chunin you need to be able to work with everyone, even people you have personal problems with," Tsunade advised.

Naruto's eyes narrowed, "Are you betting on this?" He paused in thought, "But how would you know what happened?" A look of horror and disbelief crossed his face as he turned to Anko, "Anko-chan?"

"Those puppy eyes are far less effective when you're taller than me Whiskers-chan."

He slumped in defeat and asked, "Alright, when are we meeting up with them?"

"I ordered them to appear about ten minutes from now."

When Team Ten arrived minutes later, they must have found it odd that Naruto stood in the corner lightly bumping his forehead against the wall and muttering stupid repeatedly.

"Yo," he greeted weakly. He moved to stand next to Anko to wait for Tsunade's official orders.

Anko tossed Asuma the mission scroll as Tsunade began, "Children are disappearing from a village on the Southeastern border of Fire Country. This is a joint mission between Team Anko and Team Ten. Find the culprit and retrieve the children. Anko's the primary, dismissed."

Outside the office, "Two hours at the gate, pack for at least two weeks," Anko ordered.

* * *

The day and a half they spent getting to the village was filled with mostly idle conversation about his promotion with his fellow graduates. Asuma and he had maintained a respectable distance from each other, and he hadn't been giving Naruto any looks with his genin around. Anko however, had been not-so-subtly stirring the pot. He had enjoyed the three hour long, extra loud sex session during their only night camping, but it hadn't helped the morale of the group. The varying blushes on the genin had been amusing though. She also wasn't sparing in her attempts to bring Kurenai into conversation while they traveled. Naruto was willing to bet that Anko had bet on a scuffle.

Anko and Naruto left Team Ten to make arrangements at the hotel and drop their gear off, while they went to talk to the mayor since they had all their things stored in scrolls.

"Do you have to prod him so hard?"

"But it's so much fun," Anko whined. "Plus, he's been a dick to Kurenai and you."

"You realize you're lining me up for an ass kicking right?"

"Psh, you beat him once."

"When he wasn't thinking straight, wasn't using ninjutsu or his trench knives, and was underestimating me."

"I believe in you." Naruto just sighed and followed her toward the main building.

The mayor was thin, short, and bookish. He was a fairly stereotypical representation of a bureaucrat. "Hello, you must the be the Konoha-nin I hired. I'm afraid there isn't much time for pleasantries as, as far as we know there was another rash of disappearances only a few hours ago." He gestured to the woman standing to his side, "This is Guren, my bodyguard, and her adoptive son is one of the most recent victims. She wishes to accompany you."

"If she has local intel we'll be happy to have her," Anko agreed. "We'll grab our other team and begin immediately," she turned to Guren, "if you have possible trails and locations?" The woman nodded, and they left toward the hotel quickly.

* * *

Teams Anko and Ten huddled in the trees a few hundred feet away from a cabin along with Guren. After a dedicated few hours of clone abuse and a map, they'd been able to pinpoint a cabin outside of town that Guren knew nothing about. With the aid of Anko's summons, they determined that there were several scents departing in that direction in a column. They had also confirmed Guren's adoptive son's scent among them.

"Okay, Naruto, Guren, and I are going in there, and Team Ten is going to cover the outside," Anko advised. The building was small, wooden, and dilapidated. There weren't any visible windows, and it was possible to see vague objects through the holes and cracks in the wall. "Naruto, clones." Clones made a loose ring around the building, and another team of four busted down the door and jumped in.

After a few minutes Naruto informed, "It's a temporary holding area, but there's a trap door that leads down a ways." He tilted his head, "I'm not sure why, their set up doesn't make a lot of sense unless this is a big network of people."

"Alright, we're heading in. Take up positions, Naruto will leave a couple clones here just in case," she led them up to the cabin as Naruto's remaining clones filed in and descended into the network of tunnels. He was fairly excited about his mask covering his nose with the smell that was wafting down the corridor they started in. The women on either side of him tensed and knew just as he did that it didn't bode well.

Memories flowed into his head, and Naruto stopped. "We should hurry, be ready for genjutsu." They began to run through the hallways and quickly found the source of his worry. Even though he was prepared for the sight, he barely held his lunch in. He was surprised that neither woman lost their lunch. The room before them wasn't very big, just large enough to fit six steel operating tables with space to walk between each of them. Each of the tables was occupied. Small, eviscerated bodies were strapped on to each. Coagulated and dried blood coated the floor. As much as he didn't want to, Naruto looked closely; he was the only one with some semblance of formal medical training. Each of the children were missing their heart, liver, intestines, kidneys, quadriceps, trapeziuses, triceps, and eyes. Superficial wounds littered the bodies where he could see the skin through the dried blood.

Naruto rushed into the hallway they entered from and let himself go. The taste of bile was appropriate for his conclusions about what the hell was going on here.

"He's not here!" Guren exclaimed, panic, fear, and relief mixing in her voice. Her outburst preempted his assessment of why the children were taken, it didn't have any particular bearing on catching the man his clones had seen briefly, and needlessly worrying her with what might have happened to the kid wasn't worth it.

"We need to keep going, he popped my first wave of clones at once, but once the second arrived he was already gone." Naruto wiped his mouth with the back of his hand again before continuing, "The second wave is following but they haven't dispelled yet."

"I can't find any ways out of this room other than the two hallways," Anko added.

"Come on! We need to go!" Guren urged. They rushed through the next hallway, thankfully there were no branches, but Naruto still hadn't received any memories.

"I still haven't gotten anything back." A few minutes later they stumbled to stop in another open room. Unlike the last, this was dominated by cages. Square cages just big enough for children lined the walls, stacked on top of one another; there had to be at least forty of them. The biggest attraction was all of Naruto's clones running around in circles in the middle of the room. He forcibly dispelled them, and found that they believed they were still searching tunnels. "Genjutsu."

Guren rushed to the few cages with children in them. A cage was covered in pink crystal and then atomized, "Oh god, Yukimaru," she clutched the child close to her. He appeared to be around ten and unconscious.

"Guren, we'll send him back with my clones to Team Ten," Naruto suggested. "We need to find this guy before he leaves the area."

"I can't leave him after this."

"This guy fucking tortured those kids out there!" Naruto yelled, incensed. "You noticed all those missing pieces right? Those are the pieces that are easy to take for meat," he stopped to let that sink in. "He tortured, cut them up, and ate them. They were awake while it happened, you can tell by the cuts, but you're going to beg off because your son is one of the few that made it out alive?" He forced himself to calm down, "Let me ask you this: if we miss this guy here, what's to stop him from finishing the job with Yukimaru?" Thirty clones appeared in the room, "Ten in front, ten in the middle with Yukimaru, and ten holding the rear. Get him to Team Ten."

"Fine," Guren composed herself and handed the limp body to one of his clones. His middle set of clones fished out the other children and left en masse. More clones rushed deeper into the complex.

An hour later they found the end of the tunnels. They had started to branch off soon after they left the holding area. There was no sign of the man he'd seen briefly or an exit at all. _How the fuck did he get past us?_ _No way he made it past us and my clones._ His fist slammed into the wall, sending small cracks out from the minor crater. _How? How? How?!_ Anko was similarly frustrated and let it out in a scream. Guren just paced around.

"Alright, let's head back up, I'm sure you want to see Yukimaru," Anko suggested.

Naruto's eyes widened, and he stopped mid step. _Either he had a secret exit we haven't found, in __which case he's long gone, or..._ "We need to get up there now!" A clone poofed into being just as Naruto dispelled it.

They all used shunshin to arrive at the ladder within a few minutes. Once they exited the cabin they saw the reason for Naruto's worry. Six Naruto clones held the six children they'd brought up in their chakra draining bandages.

"We drained as much as we could without it being dangerous in their condition boss, no change," one of the clones informed him.

"We need to imprison them separately somehow, so they can't get away." At the questioning looks from everyone he shouted, "Just do it! Anyone?!"

Guren nodded to Naruto and as soon as the bandages retracted shouted, "Crystal Release: Crimson Fruit!" Geodesic domes of pink crystal formed around the newly revealed children. "No one should be able to get in or out with those."

Naruto collapsed to the ground suddenly losing his energy as his adrenaline ebbed. He ran a hand through his hair, "We have a problem." Telling them his suspicions was not going to be fun. "I think," he paused to take a breath, "that whoever he is disguised himself as one of the kids."

"That makes a disturbing amount of sense," Anko frowned.

"If it isn't true, he was long gone before we finished combing the complex anyway." Team Ten stood off to the side, obviously interested, but clearly reading this wasn't a situation they wanted to step in the middle of. Naruto stood, and walked over to Guren to place a comforting hand on her shoulder, "How about we do Yukimaru first, then we can do the rest."

"How do we test it?" she asked nervously.

"It's probably a true henge, which means we just need to disrupt his concentration, knock him out in other words," he smiled at her like it was simple. Inside, he was tearing himself up. If the monster was among the children, the highest probability would be Yukimaru. Guren seemed pretty well known in town, and a predator doesn't hunt without knowing what it can't take. Yukimaru was, most probably, a replacement for his escape just in case, otherwise there didn't seem to be a reason for his capture other than sloppiness. He also represented a near perfect escape, it was obvious how much the woman doted on him, not to mention her connections to the mayor; scrutiny would almost certainly be diverted from him even if the ruse was discovered. "I just need you to open a small hole in the dome."

Naruto walked up to the dome with Yukimaru in it. A smile that didn't belong on a child's face spread across it, and the small hope that he'd kindled in him broke. One of his clone's saw what Guren couldn't and knocked her out. The domes fell, and bandages quickly rewrapped themselves around Yukimaru. More chakra flowed out from him and he lost the ability to keep the jutsu up. His bandages nearly snapped under the strain of the larger body.

"He's in the scroll, and he was so much-" his words cut off abruptly as Naruto sliced through his neck. He pulled out the one scroll the madman had on him barely a second after his headless body hit the ground. With a quick check to make sure Guren was still unconscious, he unsealed the only storage seal in the scroll. Yukimaru's body and a flute appeared. Worse things than the room in the complex had been done to him. He couldn't let Guren see it. The boy disappeared back inside the scroll. It took a minute for Naruto's stomach to come back under his control.

"Anko-chan, what do we do?" he asked forlornly.

"We can't do anything," she commented neutrally. "Team Ten, take the other children back to the village. We'll be behind you by some time." They left Naruto on his knees by the scroll and Anko standing dispassionately over an unconscious Guren.

Ten minutes later Guren woke up under her own power. It took her a moment to get reoriented before she jumped up and spun around, searching in vain for Yukimaru. She locked eyes with Naruto, "No." She dropped to the ground in a heap, too shocked even for crying. He tucked the scroll containing the body in his vest, and knelt next to her to envelope her in hug.

"No one's around, let it all out." When the tears started a few minutes later, they came in a rush. Anko stood off to the side, her gaze flicking around the area to check for interlopers. She wasn't the touchy feely type, so it fell to Naruto, not that he minded. Tears were freeing, and grief that was kept bottled up only weighed a person down. He could sacrifice however long it took for someone who just lost their child.

Once she was able to form words, she asked, "Do you have his body?"

He had another internal debate as to whether to lie to her or not but ended on the same answer he did the first few times he had it, "Yes."

She must have caught his reluctance, because she asked, "Is it," a sniffle turned into a sob before she brought it back under control, "Is it like the others we found?"

"You don't want to see it," he admitted.

Sobs wracked her form again, "What am I going to do now?" she asked no one.

* * *

A/N the Latter: And thus the Pied Piper meets his end.

So, bit of a downer of an ending, but Anko and Naruto admit they like each other and decide not to change anything. For the foreseeable future we are at NarutoxAnkoxUnknown.

Who is Naruto going to have to fight during the finals of the exams? What's going to happen to Team Seven?

I felt the whole cannibal thing necessary, because this Narutoverse is going to be one with consequences, it's easier to forget with how much everyone goofs around that they kill people for a living most of the time. It's useful to remember that there are horrors there and that the hero can't always win or be infallible. Sometimes things are just out of his control.


	7. Acceptance

Disclaimer: I don't own Naruto.

A/N: And here we are again with a transition/set up/char development chapter.

There's a short lime or lemon in this chap, it depends on whether or not you view a blowjob as "sex".

Lastly, as always, my thoughts on how the chapter developed, its construction, and where we're going next are at the end of the chapter. As an added bonus this time there's a small rant about the latest manga chapter.

Enjoy.

"Speaking."

_Naruto's thoughts._

_**Kyuubi's thoughts.**  
_

* * *

Naruto's feet plodded along the road on the way back to his apartment. He had just finished showing Anko the first incarnation of his sneaky tricks to win his matches during the chunin exams. A sigh slipped out of his mouth; it had been a week since they'd returned from the Piper mission. The kids they'd saved all related the same story: a man who looked like a traveling entertainer offered to play them a song on his flute. Before they knew what happened, they found themselves in the room full of cages. They'd hypothesized he used some sort of sound based genjutsu.

Guren had eventually lost the energy for weeping and stayed in her home, a shell of her former self. Anko and Naruto had stayed for an extra few days to see how she would hold up, but she was only capable of the bare minimum needed to remain among the living, though her expression spoke more of walking among the dead. He'd offered her the chance to migrate to Konoha, in a capacity as a civilian or a kunoichi, to avoid the memories of her recently departed son, but she'd refused, saying that there were good memories to be treasured there as well.

Warped memories of what they'd found of the madman's work had only just stopped visiting him while he slept, but they had begun to filter into the back of his mind already. He couldn't help but feel guilty as he realized he was slowly pushing the memories of that mission out of his conscious mind. There was something in his nature that felt that he should carry the burden of the children's deaths, but he couldn't. Nothing anchored him emotionally to them other than sympathy for their passing and the way of it. When he realized that, he sought to commemorate them in another way; a lesson, there had to be something to be learned from the senseless deaths. But what? As his mind played over the mission he realized something else: the odds were stacked against him from the beginning. There was absolutely nothing he could have done, was there? Was that truly what he should learn?

His stream of thoughts were broken when an ANBU landed in front of him, "Uzumaki-san, Tsunade-sama requests your presence immediately."

He nodded, and the ANBU disappeared, _What could she want?_

Breaking out of a shunshin he flew through the window and landed in the Hokage's office. Tsunade looked up at him with an annoyed twitch of her eyebrows.

"This woman is here for you brat. Just remember from now on that I am not your damned secretary!" she finished with a yell and a fist that crashed down on the top of her desk. Naruto rolled his eyes as the woman sitting in front of the desk stood up and turned around.

"Guren?" It was tough to make the connection at first, because she had changed her appearance. Instead of a spiky fanned out pony tail, her hair was bound in a regular pony tail. She wore simple, loose fitting dark green traveling clothes and no makeup.

"Naruto-san," she greeted with a small bow, "It is good to see you again." Naruto tried to keep the confused look off his face, she was acting much better than when they left her. Maybe it was because they were in front of Tsunade?

"We'll take our leave Tsu-chan. Thanks for letting me know she arrived," Tsunade sputtered incoherently as Naruto ushered Guren out of the office.

She remained quiet as they walked, and he had to make a quick decision on where to go. The Ichiraku's would ask how he knew her and that was bad, she was evidently here to see him so going over to Anko's might be weird, his lab was out of the question, so it seemed his apartment was the only option as he was fairly sure she wanted some modicum of privacy. His guilt only intensified as he remembered what he was dwelling on before he'd been called to pick her up. He tried to observe her unobtrusively, and it seemed she intended to maintain her facade. She remained silent for the entire trip back to his apartment.

The silence wasn't broken until his key slid into the lock and deactivated his security seals. "I'm sorry for arriving so abruptly," she apologized.

"Don't worry about it," he tried to smile as disarmingly as possible. "Are you hungry? I'm afraid I have been putting off visiting the market, but I should have enough to scare up some tea and a decent spread."

"If it isn't too much trouble," she replied, trying to hide the low sounds her stomach was giving out.

"Of course," he led her inside and shut the door. "I apologize for the mess, please just take a seat on the couch. I'll only be a moment," Naruto gestured toward the only piece of furniture in his apartment not covered in stacks of paper, scrolls, tools, or bits for this, that, or the other thing he was working on.

In the kitchen, all he found was some venison, cheese, and bread—sandwiches it was. After searching his nearly empty cupboards with a quick glance, he realized he didn't have any tea. He sighed to himself. Why did people only come over when he was out of everything. The nearly full container of fruit juice in the fridge was his salvation. Several sandwiches piled up on a large plate accompanied him to the couch with cups and juice.

Guren looked on the verge of saying something, but Naruto cut her off, "Eat, then we'll talk about whatever you want." They spent the better part of twenty minutes simply eating, eventually making all the sandwiches disappear.

She sipped at her drink quietly before beginning, "I couldn't stay there any longer. Not because of the memories but because of the people," another sip. "Every time someone recognized who I was, all I could see was pity in their face. They constantly offered their condolences. The only thing they could remind me of was his death." She smiled sadly, "It must seem stupid for me to run away because people were expressing their sadness about his death and were worried about me."

"Of course not."

"When we talked last you said that there could be a place for me here. I'm not sure if I want to be a kunoichi for Konoha, but already I feel a little better for having arrived," though her smile was small, it seemed content, if not happy, and lacked some of the pain he'd seen before he left.

"What do you like to do Guren-chan?"

She leaned back, eyes slightly wide and confused, "Umm," she trailed off, obviously buying some time to try to figure out what he was actually asking.

"What are you interested in?" he rephrased. "I'm going to be honest, I think you could benefit from throwing yourself into something for a little while at least," he explained. "My parents left me a decent sum, and I've sold a seal here and there; so, I've been looking to invest in something. I was thinking I could pay you to set up a business you're interested in for me, full partnership once it got off the ground, but you'd have almost complete control over it," he paused when she looked like she was going to cut in, but continued after she held herself back. "It would let you be self sufficient and gain you some credibility if you wished to remain a civilian, but if you wanted to become a kunoichi, I could always just hire someone else to run it or shut it down."

"Why would you do that for me?" she asked quietly while looking into her cup.

"You'd be doing me a favor honestly. I'm not well liked here, so I wouldn't be able to be publicly involved with the business." Naruto partially understood her reluctance. The offer sounded a bit like the one Orochimaru had given her—seemingly too good to be true or too giving for no reason. During the time they'd spent with her after the mission, Guren had admitted to having defected from Orochimaru after he had wanted to experiment on Yukimaru. As far as she knew, he thought she was dead. Naruto wasn't sure if that was true anymore. If the Snake could communicate with Danzo, that pointed fairly strongly toward having another contact, at the least, spy at the most, in Konoha.

"Why?" she asked innocently.

"The circumstances of my birth," he deflected. "I know it feels like you should devote all your time to mourning, but consider what you would want him to do if the opposite had happened," her eyes misted over as she looked away from him. "It's okay to mourn Guren, never think that you shouldn't for one you love, but the ones that have gone ahead wouldn't want us to destroy our lives with grief." Naruto cursed inwardly, he could tell she picked up on his slip but let it pass.

"I find, um, I don't know what you'd call it, but something mechanically intricate very intriguing," she admitted after a short silence. "Like analog clocks," Guren clarified.

"Would you like to work with your hands or just appreciate things of that ilk?"

She nodded, "I've always found creating things to be very satisfying, almost on a fundamental level."

"I could point you to some people that could help you find someone who has some experience, someone you could learn things from. Am I wrong in thinking you haven't really had the time to explore this?"

"No, I've never really had the chance."

"All I ask is that you sell some of my seals along with whatever you make, deal?" Naruto offered finally.

Barely a minute passed while she thought, "Yes, I'd like to take you up on that offer I think."

He nodded, "You can take my bed until you find a place to live. Don't worry about moving too fast, the couch is plenty comfortable," he added, smiling.

"Thank you."

Later that night, Naruto heard the sound of sobbing from his bedroom. He stopped from going in, relegating himself to wait outside in silent solidarity.

* * *

Naruto was lazing about in the park the next day. Before he went out that morning, he'd left money and directions for Guren, along with a note saying he would most likely be out for the day. When he arrived at Anko's apartment, he'd found a piece of paper pinned to her door. It read: "Couldn't find you before I left. Gone on a solo mission, back in two weeks." The bottom featured a crude drawing of a miniature Anko blowing a kiss. _Couldn't find me my ass._ He could only sigh, it was typical unfortunately. _'Bout time for lunch, Ichiraku's? It's been a while._

An ANBU appeared next to him before he even had the chance to get up, "Hokage-sama requests your presence immediately."

"I'll be right there." A sliver of fear wedged itself in his mind. S_he couldn't possibly have gotten into trouble so quickly._

As soon as he appeared in front of the Hokage's desk, Tsunade ordered, "ANBU out." There were a few whooshes of air, leaving them, presumably, alone. She made a few hand signs, and a thrum of power spread out across the room. Tsunade looked back at him and began, "Anko," the sliver of fear exploded, filling his mind, "made her assignment to the solo mission conditional."

The relief that filled his body was palpable, and embarrassment at being so easily riled quickly filled the void that fear left. "I assume I have something to do with these conditions?"

"You must be a detective brat," she motioned for him to come around the desk. As soon as he stopped in front of her, her hands shot out, and his unbuckled pants and boxers were pulled down to his ankles. He was quickly in her hand, "Aren't you a big boy," she commented while stroking him languidly, coaxing him into tumescence. Naruto couldn't comprehend how rapidly the situation had turned, but medics sure seemed dextrous.

His breath came quicker, but he fought the urge to buck into the warmth of her hand to say, "Wait Tsu-chan."

She stopped her ministrations, suddenly looking unsure, "Is it- Am I too old?" she asked tentatively. It was obvious she was self conscious about her body, otherwise she wouldn't wear a permanent henge.

"Of course not," he cupped the side of her face, "but if we're going to do this, I want to do it with the real you."

"Are you sure?" he nodded with a warm smile across his face, and she closed her eyes briefly. When she opened them, Naruto could barely tell the difference. A few gray hairs stuck out in the mess of blond, her skin was tanned instead of alabaster, pale battle scars were visible here and there, and her face carried more wrinkles.

"You're beautiful Tsu-chan," Naruto could see his acceptance struck a chord within her, if the smile on her face was anything to go by, "but you'd look a lot more beautiful with my dick in your mouth," he finished, leaning back against the desk and presenting himself to her.

"Subtle, brat." Naruto's witty rejoinder was cut off as he found himself buried hilt deep in Tsunade's throat. She hummed, swallowed, and flexed, massaging his entire length all at once. His eyelids fluttered, and he felt himself quickly approaching orgasm from the abrupt, intense stimulation. Tsunade gasped for air as he fell out of her mouth with a pop. Her hands went to work, one swiftly pumping his newly lubricated organ, the other softly caressing his sac. "I've been waiting all day for my special lunch, so you'd better hurry up and give it to me," she admitted in a husky voice. She added to the two handed assault, her tongue lashing out to swirl around the crown before taking the tip back into her mouth.

"I'm going to cum," Naruto warned as his hands tightened their grip on the edge of the desk. Tsunade only redoubled her efforts. The pleasurable pressure building in his groin intensified, and he barely stopped himself from thrusting wildly into her mouth. His sac tightened, and he pulsed in her mouth, filling it up with jet after jet of warm cum. Her hand never stopped moving until well after his member stopped throbbing.

She pulled away from his softening organ to make a show of swallowing, "Mmm, you taste delicious Naru-chan." With his irregular breathing, all he could do was raise an eyebrow at his new nickname.

"Tsu-chan," he began, after getting his breathing under control.

"Hmm?"

"I'm going to destroy you on this desk."

* * *

Anko trailed Naruto as they walked down a small street near the edge of the slums. She hopped around in his wake, tittering about the surprise he'd promised.

"Settle down Anko-chan. Getting back just last night would make you think you'd be too tired for all this excitement."

"Pfft," she uttered dismissively. She'd woken him up the night before with her bobbing between his legs. After, they'd, most likely, kept Guren up while they put the couch through its paces. He was almost positive she would be wiped out for a day or two at least, but she'd woken up even more chipper than usual. They stopped in front of a dilapidated and boarded storefront.

"Welcome to my lair," he cackled evilly.

After Naruto closed the last door, Anko whistled, "That's a lot of seals." She sauntered around glancing briefly at the things on each of his work tables. "So why are you only now telling me about this place?" she wondered idly.

"I was," he struggled to find the right word, "hesitant to show you. It was empty when I found it and I'm using it for my, and our, own needs now, but you and I both know there are few people who would create underground complexes like this." He sighed as she stiffened, "I didn't want to keep this from you any longer, regardless of its dubious parentage." She stayed silent and didn't turn around to meet his gaze. "This was part of the surprise. You know, showing you the location of all of my really important projects and notes." Of course, all the even mildly important things were locked inside the sealed scrolls lying around the room, but if someone stole them, it would only be a matter of time for them to find a way to break the seals without destroying their contents. "Even parts of the Hiraishin are in here."

She turned and quickly encircled Naruto in a hug, "Thank you," she whispered. From her reaction, he had to wonder if he was the first person to put their trust into Orochimaru's former apprentice.

He tilted her head up to give her a light kiss. "Come on, this was supposed to be the crappy part of the surprise," he grinned.

"Okay." She released him and wiped the beginnings of tears away. "What do ya got for me?" she asked with her usual grin returning.

"This," he picked up a folded piece of clothing and unfurled it, "is your new trench coat." She quickly shucked out of her old coat to try the new one on for size.

"I guess I shouldn't be surprised that you got the size right," she said with smirk.

Naruto ignored her, "To begin with, please be cognizant of the seal on your collar. It acts the same way my color changing ones do, simply channel chakra into it and picture the color or pattern you'd like your coat to be." He gestured to the front of the coat, "If you'll notice on the facing of the inside edge, multiple storage seals run vertically on either side." His finger tapped her cuffs, "Inside each sleeve are two rows of storage seals running in a circle."

"Handy," Anko commented as she began unloading various weapons and item from her old coat.

"But that's not all! In addition to the thin and light, but strong chainmail sandwiched inside the layers of cloth, I've included extra strips of specially prepared fabric all over the coat." He ran his fingers along the outside of her forearm, "For example, simply channel some chakra to this strip that runs the length of your forearm. It will become rigid and hard enough to block something even as devastating as a sword, or sturdy enough for you to deliver a good old forearm shiver. I've attached patches over your chest, back, and arms. When chakra free they will remain flexible." His arms spread out to gesture toward the entire coat, "As a final added bonus, the outermost layer has chakra absorption seals woven in. Unfortunately due to the nature of the garment, they are fairly weak so please don't rely on them overmuch."

"How weak are we talkin'?"

"They will be able to take the edge off up to A-Rank ninjutsu, but that doesn't mean they can stop them cold." He rolled his hand lazily in the air, "It's more of a last line of defense type deal. They also have to be discharged once they're filled. What I mean is, they won't be able to stop the heat or any physical momentum immediately, for example, but they will essentially end the enemies control over the jutsu by taking their chakra out of it. Which means it will quickly disperse, so they won't have any follow through with any of them." A grin stretched across his face, "Of course, that's why I included water, fire, and lightning containment seals in the protection array as well."

"You really did all that?"

"Course." Naruto snuck a quick kiss, "I'm not always going to be there to protect you."

"You realize this is worth an insane amount of ryo right?" she wondered, after thumping him in the chest with the butt of a kunai.

He shrugged, "Also check your outside, right hip pocket."

She pulled out a stack of coupons for the place they usually ate at, "This is really too much." The way her eyes lit up at the prospect of free dango tarnished her sincerity a bit.

"Nah, it's just the rewards you reap for being an awesome girlfriend."

"Man, Tsunade must have been one hell of a lay."

He wrapped his arms around her waist, "She was, but we haven't found anyone better than you at getting me off yet." Naruto pulled her close, "But this is for everything since we've met, and I fear it still isn't enough."

Anko pantomimed puking, but didn't pull away, "That was such a cheesy line, you know I hate that kinda shit."

"That blush crawling up your cheeks tells me you don't mind it all the time Anko-chan," he countered with a smile.

* * *

Naruto stood in the back of Guren's shop. A month after he'd given her the idea and the money, she'd secured a location, an apartment, and an out of work craftsman. Another month and the shop was already doing a brisk business in his seals, and a decent amount of special orders for equipment for eccentric ninja. He hadn't known beforehand, but apparently seal masters, he didn't really feel like a seal master, even though he qualified for the title even if by the tiniest margin, didn't usually work in house with any other craftsman.

Guren had moved out three weeks after she'd arrived. Her nightly crying had stretched into crying every other night. She seemed fine during the day, other than isolated incidents when something reminded her of Yukimaru and she broke down briefly. After she left, he tried to make sure to visit her every day, but he still felt a little powerless. It was impossible to tell how well she was actually doing, even when the shop took off, without her being frank.

"How are you doing Guren-chan?" he asked as he watched her assemble a senbon launcher.

"It's still hard, but it's getting easier," she said the last a little quieter with pain flashing across her face.

"That guilt is misplaced."

"Tell my heart, not me."

"Is this helping?" he gestured to everything around them.

"It's helping to balance me out." Her hands still hadn't stopped moving.

"The exams are starting in a week. Until the finals are over, I probably won't have a lot of free time, so you'll be seeing less of me." He dropped a hand on her shoulder, "Just be careful, and even if I'm busy, if you need anything, come find me. Okay?"

"I will, thank you, but you should make sure we don't run out of seal stock. All of these foreign ninja should be good business."

"I'll drop off extras by the end of the week you slave driver," Naruto teased. "I'll see you tomorrow," he called over his shoulder as he walked out the back door. As a general rule the shinobi population, the shop's clientele, wasn't as antagonistic as the civilian population, but it didn't hurt to be a little careful where the shop's reputation was concerned. An ANBU melted out of the wall just after he closed the door.

"Uzumaki-san, Hokage-sama requests your presence at the Torture and Interrogation Unit."

"Very well."

Twenty minutes later he stood with Tsunade, in a darkened hallway, looking through one way glass into an interrogation room. The red headed girl they'd captured while they were in Wave, Karin if he recalled correctly, sat at a metal table. A chakra sealing tag stood out prominently on her forehead, and she was looking decidedly less healthy than when they'd brought her in.

"I recognize her, but what do you need me for after all this time?"

"She worked for Orochimaru out of self-preservation," Tsunade informed him. "We've cleared her for release, but I wanted to let you know that she's an Uzumaki." Naruto's emotions spiked and quickly became a morass that he couldn't tell apart.

He decided to go with practicality instead of emotion, "How do you know she won't immediately go back to Orochimaru or become his spy in Konoha?" He would be loathe to lose a member of his family, but he wasn't naïve enough to simply accept her—he especially wasn't looking to become close to someone that could hurt Anko in the way only someone or something related to Orochimaru could. On the other hand, if she was sincere about not wanting to be under his thumb, maybe the two of them could bond.

"Orochimaru wanted her in Kusa to take the chunin exams. He seems to be planning something," her wistful sigh was filled with melancholy. "As you can imagine with something of that magnitude, we've had Inoichi Yamanaka digging around in her mind several times. It's his opinion."

"You still haven't told me why I'm here."

"I thought I'd give you a chance to talk to her before she takes off to places unknown."

Naruto smiled warmly, "Thanks, Tsu-chan."

"Whatever, brat. Get in there already."

He opened the door and took a seat across from his long lost cousin. It took a moment for his eyes to adjust to the brightness of the room, and the temperature seemed to be just above comfortable. "We've met, but I don't think I ever gave you my full name, Naruto Uzumaki at your service."

Karin narrowed her eyes, "You don't look like an Uzumaki."

"Yeah, I get that a lot," he sighed and shook his head. "Uh, I don't really have any way to prove that I am other than the fact that they let me in here to see you."

"I suppose it makes some sense," she grudgingly admitted.

"I'd like to give a blood relation a chance to be a friend if not family," he explained. "As long as you hold nothing in your heart or mind for Orochimaru, because if you cause any harm to the people I care about, mental, physical, or emotional, you'll wish I left you to his tender mercies, and you'll feel that way for at least a month, minimum, okay?" he leveled the full brunt of Kurama's malevolence at her briefly, less than a second, but it caused her to gasp and nearly pass out as sweat beaded on her forehead. "If you don't do that we should be fine, maybe you'll even get into the group I threaten people over," Naruto finished with a smile.

After marshaling her faculties she said, "You act like I've already agreed."

"I'd like to at least give it a try." He didn't even want to begin to think about how he was going to deal with the inevitable confrontation with the remnants of Team Seven if she stuck around.

"Well, I don't know what I'm going to do yet. I guess it couldn't hurt." It seemed those words cost her something, Naruto couldn't figure out why she would be so hesitant.

"Alright, I'll have them let me know when they're releasing you so I can meet you outside and show you around a bit," he tried to look as reassuring as possible,

"Whatever floats your boat," she said dismissively.

_Maybe I should rethink this, do I really need another tough girl in my life?_

* * *

A/N the Latter: Chunin exams begin next chapter! Is Guren actually okay? What are Orochimaru and Sasori planning? Will Sasuke participate in the exams?

Yeah, I don't know about lime/lemon scene, it was passable I think at least.

We don't see a ton of crying and blubbering on screen about the Piper mission. This is because Guren has always been/viewed herself as a strong person. She's going to try her damnedest to not dump that on Naruto.

All we see from Naruto at the moment is guilt, because that's pretty much all he can show. As much as we like to believe we are paragons of caring, there's little motivation to do anything or change without a real connection with the people afflicted. Naruto can't properly relate to them, so at best he'll display sympathy. He also has little idea on how to help someone cope 'cause all the people he knows are so fucking weird. The best he can do is offer Guren (the one person he has a connection to, albeit tenuously) a new life and the security of him being there to catch her as much as he wants to completely solve her "problem".

Will that mission and its consequences affect Naruto in different ways? Yes, but we haven't had the opportunity to see them yet.

Additionally, Minato's signature techniques will probably begin to show up next chapter, which should be more action-y.

Naruto Manga Rant (Spoilers):

What the shit? Is Kishi serious right now? All you need to pull a possibly unlimited number of souls out of the **_Shinigami's_** belly is a mask? And it's conveniently located in Fire country in an apparently Uzumaki owned place no one ever told Naruto about? You don't even have to leave home, how about we ship it to you? What a fucking asspull. I don't even really know what to say because it was so out there. Doesn't the fact you can do it so easily completely invalidate a huge portion of the sacrificial aspect of the jutsu? I can't wait until Sasuke trains with all four Hokages while the war is going on and then comes out somehow stronger than Naruto.

That said, at least it will be interesting having all four Hokages back, and hopefully this marks the return of something awesome happening instead of whiney Obito flashbacks and hearing the inner thoughts of every single person on the battlefield all the time.


	8. Purge

Disclaimer: I don't own Naruto.

A/N: Man, this chapter was a bitch to write. I had to tie up a bunch of loose ends before the chunin exam finals started, so the chapter feels a bit disjointed and information heavy.

A note on Anko's personality: in this story she equates physical intimacy with emotional intimacy (with people she likes, and the change to a "healthier" balance will be gradual and take a while. The changes have already started, but they're fairly small.

As I was referencing the manga for exam room, I realized that all the interior sets of Naruto are fucking cavernous. Even Tazuna's house has enormous amounts of unused space. It just seemed odd that no one in the Narutoverse could properly allocate space. Also on the sizes of things: I'd forgotten how giant senbons are. They're like a foot long and as thick as a pencil.

Thanks for the reviews as always.

Enjoy.

"Talking."

_Naruto's thoughts._

_**Kyuubi's thoughts.**  
_

* * *

Naruto stood over the unmoving form of Sasuke. His arms were strapped to the railings of the bed, and a paper sealing tag was attached over a section of his collarbone. Sweat flew off his brow during his occasional thrashing fits. Tsunade stood on the other side of bed; her glowing green hands hovered over different parts of Sasuke, seemingly at random. Jiraiya sat a desk they'd brought into the small, private, medical room. A hundred foot scroll was partially unrolled in front of him, and he was meticulously going over the array of seals that filled it.

"He's as stable as he will get for now," Tsunade informed the others as the glow of her hands died out.

"So, what's our working theory on why he did this two days before the exams? Was this his plan to begin with or did he decide to tip his hand?" Naruto asked the room.

"My people have reported mobilization in Suna and Oto, the village with the musical note as its symbol, recently," Jiraiya cut in. "It's only begun in the last few weeks, and it's full scale," he added.

"Full scale like war?" Naruto wondered.

"If Orochimaru is a part of the mobilization, and Konoha is having a large event where we could be embarrassed, slash, destroyed, chances are they're coming for us," Jiraiya still hadn't looked up from the sealing array. "Chances also are, based on their movements, it won't be until the finals or after."

"We're already dealing with it Naru-chan, don't worry about it," Tsunade finally cut in. Jiraiya looked up at that, but quickly returned to scanning the scrolls, apparently wanting to everyone to miss the curiosity. Naruto filed it away for later.

"Alright, so do we know how he even got to Sasuke?"

"No idea," Tsunade began, "ANBU reported a surge of 'dark chakra' in the Uchiha compound. They subdued an apparently psychotic Sasuke and here we are."

"Pretty crack squad of barrier guards and ANBU investigation teams we've got then," Naruto replied dryly.

"Well, he is a Sannin," she reasoned.

Naruto snorted, "Yeah, but so are you two."

Tsunade's brows furrowed, but a small, twitching smile stayed on her lips, "What's that supposed to mean brat?"

"Just that the shine kind of wears off of the Sannin title after you meet a couple of 'em."

Tsunade cocked her fist back, but was interrupted by Jiraiya, "Princess, if you're going to do beat him, take it outside so you don't accidentally ruin his sealing array." Her fist locked around the front of his shirt, and she yanked him bodily out of the room. Naruto yelped as his shoulder thudded into the door frame during his unexpected exit.

The door clicked shut just as his back slammed against the wall of the empty room. Pressure caused by Tsunade's palm on his chest was forgotten as her lips crashed into his. Their tongues clashed for minutes, before they broke apart panting.

"Tsu-chan, Jiraiya's right in the next room."

"So?" she asked absently while she rubbed him through his pants.

"You know why," he said a little more forcefully. His hands settled on her shoulders, "He'll smell it on us, and it'll crush him."

"It's not like we're getting married _Naru-chan_," the subtext behind the emphasis on his pet name really made him not want to care, but even if he didn't like Jiraiya, it seemed too cruel to dangle the sexual afterglow of the love of his life in front of him.

Naruto sighed and leaned forward to rest his forehead against hers, "Listen Tsu-chan, I know how amazing my cock is, but this will hurt him. If you want me to fuck you twenty feet from him, you should talk to him."

"About how we're fucking?" she asked incredulously. "Why should I have to tell him about that?"

"Not about us specifically, but you should at least clear the air with him about your relationship," he sighed again. "I heard him talk about you enough while we were trying to find you that it was easy to tell he still carries a torch, and that, that torch still has some hope in it."

"Why does it always seem like you're the older one?"

"Well if it makes you feel better, due to shadow clone training I think I'm technically somewhere around eighty mentally. Plus, I've pretty much read the entire library which includes all sorts of things that help me sound something close to wise."

"It does make me feel a little better," she groped him again roughly. "I'll talk to him after this," she promised as she started to open the door.

"Was that last part really necessary?" Naruto wondered, mostly to himself, shaking his head. He wiped the back of his hand across his mouth several times to make sure no lipstick was left on his face.

When he walked back into Sasuke's room, he was assaulted with questions by Jiraiya, "How did you come up with this seal? Why is it rectangular? What did you write this with?"

"In order, lots of studying Anko's seal," Jiraiya snickered, "and shadow clones, it seemed impractical to write it circularly, and since the only reason I could see to use a brush was that it was easy to use ink with blood mixed in it, I made a special pen that has a modified storage seal that draws out the ink mixture from a reservoir a little at a time."

"You can't just not write it in a circle!"

"Why not? With that array, you set the scroll on it's edge, surrounding the person with the cursed seal, in a circle," Naruto explained. "Then all you have to do is draw a few measly connection seals from two points on the array to the cursed seal and you're good to go."

"How do you keep it from moving if you set it on the edge?"

"I've incorporated seals in the array to use some chakra from the actual sealing to keep it standing on edge and stationary once you create the connection," no one seemed to have anything else to ask or say, and silence dominated the room for a moment. "I should point out that it will be more effective, or at least less painful, the sooner we use it on Sasuke."

"Why?" Tsunade asked.

"The more you use it, the more its hooks get into you. Do you think he'll be able to not use it if something about Itachi comes up?"

They both nodded, and a half hour later, an unconscious Sasuke was lying on the floor in the middle of the unrolled scroll. Jiraiya pumped his chakra into the scroll and Sasuke started screaming.

* * *

Naruto laid, propped up, on Anko's bed. A sleeping Anko laid between his legs with her back against his chest. One of his arms was wrapped around her, but the other was outstretched, a crystal sphere held between his fingers; an odd purple mist seemed to swirl around in it. The sun finally rose high enough to stop casting an annoying glare into the room, the downside being that it no longer kept Naruto awake. He hadn't slept since the night before last, all the curse sealing had really kept him from it.

Anko groaned as she stirred, "Damn Whiskers, what the fuck did you do to me?"

"Nothing untoward I assure you, at least while you were asleep." Naruto used his free hand to grab a hand mirror from the end table, "Check it out Anko-chan."

Anko snatched the mirror out of his hand, and after a few seconds her other hand shot to the juncture of her neck and shoulder, "It worked," she murmured. She hurled the mirror off the bed and spun around in Naruto's lap. He thumped into the headboard as she threw her entire weight onto him with her arms locked around his neck. "I can't believe it! I'm finally free of him!" she yelled. Several barrages of kisses impacted various parts of his face and body.

He cut into her giddy laughing with, "Another present Anko-chan," he held the sphere in front of her. "This, my dear, is the piece, whatever it was, of Orochimaru that was in your seal." She pushed off of him and settled into a kneeling position. He dropped the sphere into her upturned palm, "Do with it what you will, 'cause I have no idea what will happen."

Anko looked at it intensely before asking, "What do you think will happen if I smash it?"

"It'll probably release it, and it will either dissipate or return to him." He brushed some hair out of her face, "Might I suggest throwing it down that ravine on the outskirts of the village?"

"Won't that break it?"

"Doubtful, it doesn't weigh enough to hit the ground with enough force to shatter it."

Anko squealed, "Let's go do it later today," she dropped the sphere in a drawer in the end table. "But first, I'm going to give you some head since I'm still a little sore for a full on pounding, and then we're going to take a nap." She cut Naruto off with a hard look, "It looks like you stayed up to make sure I came through okay, so we're taking a nap before you do anything other than cum in my mouth."

"You spoil me Anko-chan."

The back of his head thumped into the headboard after a quick shove from her hand, "That's my line you bleeding heart," her kisses started at his lips and trailed down his clothed chest.

"Anko-chan?"

"Hm?" she wondered as his belt buckle came undone.

"Just do it regularly please, I don't need anything special."

"That was one time!"

* * *

An explosion shattered the wall of Naruto's testing area. Dust and debris exploded back toward him, and diverted to either side once they hit the shield of wind chakra. He giggled giddily. _Hello equalizer._ As the cloud of debris cleared, the destruction was laid bare. The depression in the wall was at least twenty feet deep and fifteen feet across.

"Quite impressive what you've managed to do with that jutsu Naruto-kun," a voice echoed out from the hallway connecting his lab and testing area.

"Just a little professional courtesy, that's all I'm asking. Why do they have to keep breaking into my lab? How do they even know about it?" he mumbled, annoyed, to himself. Naruto turned around to face the shinobi, "How did you find this place?" The man was a few inches under Naruto's height, black hair pulled into a pony tail. Onyx eyes sat above pronounced tear troughs. A black cloak covered his wiry form except for the very center of his chest. He wore a dark blue shirt, matching pants, and crimson sash over a mesh bodysuit.

"I bought the location from your friend Sasori."

"Damn him," he cursed under his breath. Naruto took a deep breath, "So, what can I do for one of Konoha's most infamous missing-nin?"

"I owe you a boon for keeping Sasuke out of Orochimaru's hands," he informed solemnly.

"That was quick, we only removed the cursed seal the night before last."

"I still have a few informants in Konoha."

"Be that as it may, you shouldn't worry about it," Naruto waved him off. "The seal I created to remove Orochimaru's was for someone else, Jiraiya just happened to be where Sasuke was."

"Nevertheless, I owe you."

"I'm at a bit of a loss, what could you even offer me?"

"Not what I'm offering, but what I'm giving you," he reached inside his cloak only to come out with a small glass canister. "This," he walked forward to give it to Naruto, "is the Sharingan of a very good friend of mine. He gave this to me with the promise to use it to protect the Uchiha and Konoha."

_Kurama, can you wake up for this please?_

_**What do you want damn it?**_

_Itachi Uchiha just gave me an intact Sharingan._ A growl echoed from the back of his mind.

"I have no doubt Orochimaru's plans to use Sasuke would not have turned out well for my little brother, and I doubt Orochimaru would abandon his plans to destroy Konoha," Itachi reasoned. "That leads me to the conclusion that you've fulfilled both parts of the promise for this eye and will, most likely, continue doing so."

_How much control do you have over my body in there?_

_**You're taking that cursed thing?**_

_ It's too much work to try to control you with it if that's why you don't want me to have one._

_**It would be troublesome even for you Naruto, remember that.**_

_Yeah, yeah, ominous threats and what not. Can you make it so mine won't be like Kakashi's? Retaining my eye color would also be nice._

_**I could alter the eye color, pretty much everything else will come down to how good your big breasted wench is.**_

"I don't suppose you have a Byakugan on you too?" Naruto wondered jokingly. "Might as well replace the other one too."

"Thank you again, but fair warning, I will be looking in on Orochimaru."

Naruto sighed, "She'll be pissed if you pull it off, but I'd much rather have her out of harm's way and angry."

"Why haven't you used the Hiraishin yet?"

"What makes you think I know it?"

"You've already altered the Rasengan to suit your tastes," he pointed out.

"Several parts were missing from the notes. It wouldn't work for the longest time," Naruto ran a hand through his hair. "It just isn't in my nature to fight the way the original jutsu is supposed to be used. Plus, a high level opponent will render it less than effective. Also, I'm working on my own version that doesn't need a physical anchor," he paused at Itachi's slightly raised eyebrow. "We both know you're not going to compromise me in the least while I'm in a position to help your brother, and no one I trust likes to hear about jutsus I'm making."

"And you trust me?"

"You have a reason to not hamper, if not ensure, my good health as long as I have a seal that can remove cursed seals and I'm in the same place as your brother; that's a fairly solid connection."

"I'd appreciate if you kept an eye on him when you could," Itachi exploded into a murder of crows that flew straight up through the ceiling as soon as he finished talking.

Naruto sighed, _I guess he doesn't like to talk about jutsus either._

* * *

Naruto leaned casually against the wall next to the blackboard with his arms crossed over his chest. He was dressed in his normal attire flavored in mottled shades of black except for his green flak jacket; turtleneck, half mask, cargo pants tucked into tall closed toe boots, bandages, leather gloves. His hair was tightly bundled into a long pony tail with bandages, and his canisters still hung at his back.

Instead of dual kukris crossed under the canisters, a smallsword hung diagonally across his back for a left handed draw. The other new addition was a seal covered blindfold wrapped around his head. Light could pass through the cloth as if it was made of glass, in one direction only, thanks to the seal work he'd done, but it had the effect of making his blindfold a deeper black than was possible with any dye; occasionally there would be distortions, and it would seem as if things near the cloth were spiraling into it. Another set of seals made his eyelids transparent while the blindfold was touching them—it'd be particularly irritating, both figuratively and literally, if he had to blink while it was on. He'd had another growth spurt in the intervening months that he'd only consciously noticed recently. It shot him up to five foot eleven, putting him in one of the higher percentiles for height in Konoha.

He looked out over the milling crowd, participants for the first test of the chunin exams were still filtering into the enormous room; it was a square somewhere between seventy five and one hundred feet on a side. Desks covered the majority of the floorspace, with an empty area at the doors and one at the front by the board, where Naruto was lounging. Tsunade had tapped him to help out since they were short handed, and he was technically on the bottom of the chunin totem pole. Annoyingly, the rookie teams seemed to be some of the last to arrive, and he'd wanted to touch base with some of them before the craziness of the exams kicked off.

Team Ten walked in about forty five minutes before the start of the exam, and they were the first rookie team. Naruto disappeared in an empty shunshin to reappear next to the new group.

"Hey guys, ready for the exam?"

"Hey Naruto-kun!" Ino practically shouted. "Do you know if Sasuke's coming?"

Naruto wasn't even sure how she thought Sasuke would be coming, maybe with a reserve team? "He isn't," he confirmed. "He'll probably just get a big showy field promotion at some point in the next six months, so you'd better fight hard Ino-chan." Her eyes glazed over with thoughts Naruto was fairly sure he didn't want to know about.

"What are you here for Naruto-san?" Choji wondered between mouthfuls of chips.

"Oh, you know, just an extra sets of hands for proctoring," he dropped a hand on both of their shoulders and shunshinned with them into an empty corner. Naruto stomped a foot, and a translucent blue barrier shielded them from the rest of the room. "I just wanted to tell you guys before the exams, I accept you, and if you ever need to talk or some support just let me know." Both of their faces reddened, Choji's more than Shikamaru's, and Shikamaru's eyes narrowed. "Abandoned training ground, accidental."

"Wait, what do you mean you accept us? Aren't you and Sasuke..." Shikamaru trailed off.

"Oh, that was a lark. Used a special clone henged as Sasuke."

They both tilted their heads and squinted their eyes, "So you aren't?" he wondered.

"No. Well, I guess theoretically bisexual?" Naruto clarified. "I mean I could probably close my eyes and get through a blow job from a dude, but anything more than that would be asking too much I think. Of course, that's excluding traps." He put a hand to his chin in a thinking pose, "'Cause they're supposed to pass as women right? So, I guess that doesn't really impact my sexual standing, but barring super effeminate dudes made up as women, males really don't do it for me; dicks in general are not aesthetically pleasing to me." Naruto made contemplative sounds, "I don't really know about traps though, I don't think I've ever seen an actual one. Would I even know if I did? Hey do you guys know any traps? 'Cause now I kind of have a lot of questions to unload at one." He looked at their confused and increasingly embarrassed faces, and decided he should wrap it up, "Anyway short answer: straight unless there was a male who passed as a female, even then I'd probably stop once I found the surprise."

"Was all of that really necessary? Also, you're not really bisexual if you have to be tricked into the 'bi' part are you?" Naruto shrugged and Shikamaru sighed. "So, you're not going to tell anyone?"

"Nah."

"Did you do this right now just to shake us up for the exams?"

"Maybe."

"Are you going to do it to all the rookies?"

"Also maybe, but Ino's looking upset," Naruto cut off the chakra feeding the barrier, and she rushed in. "See ya," the wall propped him up as he returned to his previous position in an empty shunshin. He really would be as supportive as he could. As far as he knew, the only flak they would catch being clan heirs, as long as they were discreet, would be to continue the line. His main motivation was making sure they were ready to lead in the field. If they couldn't complete the chunin exams under random pressures, they didn't deserve to take higher missions or lead. Also, it was just amusing to do, and he was absolutely sure Ino would be harassing them for the remainder of the exams wondering what they talked about.

Unfortunately, all the rookie's extra progress seemed to have stalled soon after the tournament, other than the ones who were already training themselves into the ground. He didn't have any surprises for the other teams as spectacular as the one he'd revealed to Team Ten, so he wasn't really sure what to do to shake them up. Team Eight had the lowest chance of making it to the finals out of the three, Team Nine the highest. If Eight was going to fail anyway, there wasn't much point in making them fail even worse, and he really wanted to keep avoiding Tenten.

A little over an hour and a half later, Hinata raised her hand to opt out of the tenth question. Team Eight were disqualified and made their way out of the testing room. Naruto frowned, _I guess they weren't close to ready._

"Everyone remaining passes," Ibiki informed the resolved teams. Only three teams from Konoha passed the first exam. As Naruto recalled, that was fairly low for an exam held on your home turf.

The doors at the back of the room slammed open. A brown haired man dressed in something close to the standard jonin uniform entered. He had an odd style of forehead protector that extended down to cover his cheeks and pushed back his short, spiky brown hair. "Follow me to the location of the second part of the exam!"

* * *

Naruto entered Guren's shop a few days after the conclusion of the second part of the exam. The entirety of Team Nine, Choji, and Shikamaru had managed to make it into the finals. It had ended up being a good showing for Konoha despite the lack of numbers passing the first part. Kurenai hadn't been devastated, but she was disappointed, even though she didn't let her team know; it was easy to figure out as she hadn't come around for sex in quite a while.

He found Guren talking to a woman a few inches taller. Her dark green hair was held up in a bun, and two light orange bangs framed her face. She wore a sleeveless black top and pants, with an off white sash tied around her waist.

Once Guren saw him enter, she waved him over, "Hey Naruto-kun, let me introduce you to a friend of mine." She gestured to the woman next to her, "This is Pakura-san, she's a guard for the Frost Daimyo. Pakura-san this is Naruto-kun, he's the owner of this shop."

"It's Guren's shop," Naruto said as he smiled at them both, "I just gave her the opportunity. Hello, Pakura-san it's nice to meet you."

"Good to meet you Naruto-san."

"Guard of a Daimyo huh? I'm surprised he's here already," Naruto said.

"I requested that he let me prepare a place for him here once I heard Guren had relocated here," Pakura explained. Guren gave her friend a soft smile.

"Well, don't hesitate to let me know if you need anything. If she hasn't told you already, I'm the seal master that supplies this place."

"Thank you," Pakura gave a small bow.

"I just came by to touch base Guren, but it seems like you two are busy; so, I'll leave you to it."

"Actually," Guren began, "Pakura-san just arrived and was hoping for a bit of a tour. I need to resolve a few things with one of our local suppliers, so if you could do me the favor of showing her around, it would be a huge favor to me Naruto-kun."

"Uh, I guess that would be fine if Pakura-san doesn't mind," Pakura shook her head. "But do you need any help with the problems? I could send a couple clones with you."

"I'll be fine Naruto-kun," she said as she patted him on the shoulder. Naruto applied a quick henge before Guren ushered them out the front door.

They walked for a few minutes before Pakura asked, "Why did you do that?"

"I have a reputation not of my own making, and I don't want to cast any aspersions on the business," he explained as he dropped the henge. "Is there anything in particular you'd like to see?"

"I'm not sure."

Two hours of touring later left them back in front of Guren's shop, but before they could part ways someone jumped on his back, "Hey there Whiskers, I've been lookin' all over for you. Who's the hot piece you've got with you?"

"Hey there Anko-chan, this is Pakura-san, one of Guren-chan's friends. Pakura-san, this is my girlfriend Anko-chan."

"Greetings Anko-san."

"Hey there Kura-chan, if you need a place to stay you're welcome to share our bed," Anko purred. Naruto had recently moved into Anko's oversized apartment. He'd practically been spending every night there before that anyway, so not much changed.

"Thank you very much Anko-san, I believe I'll take you both up on that offer," Pakura answered with a small bow.

"Um, Pakura-san, not that I would mind you staying over, but you're aware Anko-chan was implying you'd be joining us sexually?" Naruto wondered awkwardly.

"Yes," her voice never changed, and there wasn't a hint of blush on her face.

"Huh."

* * *

A/N the Latter: Next time the finals of the chunin exams and some action. What's Orochimaru going to do now? How will Itachi fit in? What are Sasori's goals in Konoha? Does Pakura understand she just agreed to have sex with Anko and Naruto?

I don't know about this chapter, but it had to be done to get to the fun stuff next chapter. Naruto's finally going to cut loose next chapter. I did like how the finalists turned out though, and Shikamaru and Choji being together just seemed right.

Nearly forgot Naruto got that Sharingan. I'm not terribly worried about it, because this Naruto likes to make his own jutsu. Even if he copied a jutsu he'd probably just use it as a base to make his own. His taijutsu is poor compared to his overall level, so that bump isn't going to make him god-like. Shisui's only listed Mangekyo power was Kotoamatsukami, so he'll have to earn the more offensive powers if he gets them at all.

Random notes:

The only reason Naruto was with Tsunade and Jiraiya in the beginning was because of his seal. They aren't letting him in on every other thing.

He's clothed in Anko's bed so he doesn't have to get dressed if he has to run her to the hospital or something similar.

A trap is a male who crossdresses as a female, with the additional requirement that an observer believes they are female until the big reveal.


	9. Sacrifice

Disclaimer: Still don't own Naruto.

A/N: Preparation for Fat Tuesday and Valentine's day really made this chapter annoying to get out. Hardest part? Figuring out what Anko calls Naruto when they're alone.

As I said last time, senbons are way different than needles, so I've differentiated here. When I say needle it's essentially a sewing needle, and senbons are the giant ones.

As always my spoilery thoughts are at the bottom.

And thanks for all the follows, favorites, and reviews, you guys are awesome.

Enjoy.

Eh, you know what's what by now.

* * *

Naruto waited in the "reception" area of the Torture and Interrogation department. Tsunade had let him know the day before that Karin was due to be released, so he'd arrived the next day, at the vague time of midday, and had now been waiting for over two hours. He wasn't that annoyed, he'd spent the time wondering what he was going to do with her.

He shifted in one of the three hard metal chairs in the small room. The chunin sitting behind the reinforced glass had refused to look at him for his entire wait. In lieu of worrying about what to do with Karin, he had undertaken the mission of getting the desk jockey to break her focus on her paper work. Just as he was about to start launching paper balls at the window, the heavy steel door slid open.

Karin walked out looking annoyed. She saw him waiting, snorted, then headed to the guard. Naruto sighed, _I hope I don't regret forgoing the work to figure out someplace to put her._ Her prickly personality was a problem, but if she had to stay over Anko and his place, the odds of her getting propositioned was going to increase dramatically. _Plus, she'll probably shoot me all kinds of glares when Anko and I invite someone else over for some fun and be super annoyed when it gets loud._ He sighed again. _Maybe I could call in a favor with Guren or Kurenai? I don't really want to pay for a hotel room for however long with all the overbooking for the exams._

"Hey!" Karin nearly yelled.

"Hm?" apparently he hadn't noticed her get her things from the desk jockey and walk up to him.

"Are you ready to go?" she asked a little more softly.

"Sure, sorry," Naruto stood up and lead her out of the building.

She sped up so she was walking along side him down the street, "I wanted to apologize," Karin informed him after a large breath. "I shouldn't have been such a bitch in the interrogation room."

He smiled at her, "Don't worry about it Karin-chan. They kept me waiting through lunch, how do you feel about some food?"

"Sure."

An hour later, most of it being awkward silence, they walked out of an okonomiyaki joint. He decided to head toward Guren's shop to gauge their reactions to each other and check in.

"Okay, you're obviously not going to tell me, so what happened with your eyes?" Karin huffed.

_Was that why she apologized? _"Training exercise. No worries, they both still work." She looked away and grunted. "So, any idea what you'd like to do in the long term?"

"I've never wanted to be a front line soldier," she said a little sadly. "I've always been classed as a medic because of my special chakra. I wouldn't mind actually learning how to be a medic. _He_ already forced me to learn some things in that area," Karin added with a touch of anger. "Anything dealing with logistics would work well for me I think."

"Interesting."

* * *

The door to their bedroom clicked shut and Anko took the opportunity to cuddle up against Naruto.

"Oh Anko, you're going to make me feel like a mistress with waiting to show your affections until we're behind closed doors," Naruto pouted. He heard the front door close, and he was sure he heard their guest in the living room shout something akin to "finally". Pakura had been with them quite a few times, but with the finals coming up tomorrow, she had to get back to the hotel her Daimyo was being housed at.

Anko dropped a fist onto his solar plexuses, "Shut up."

Naruto coughed at the loss of breath, "And you beat me too?" he laughed.

"This part is just ours, I don't want to let anyone else in on it," she said softly after laying her head on his shoulder.

"You don't have to explain, I just enjoy being close to you." Anko sighed, and Naruto was confused.

"Naruto."

"What's wrong Anko-chan?" She hadn't risen to his bait, and that was vaguely worrying.

"I need you to be careful tomorrow."

"Huh?"

"If _he_ shows up and knows about us, he might try to do something to you just to get to me," Anko explained with tears brimming in her eyes.

"You act like I'm not going to try my best to come out of whatever happens alive."

"It's just... I just... Just be careful," her voice got much quieter and he felt wetness on his chest, "please." Naruto felt a lump rise in his throat, and his eyes misted over slightly. He hadn't realized how worried she was; warmth rose in his chest, it was nice to have someone who cared so much.

His arm tightened around her, "I love you too."

* * *

Tsunade was making some speech about the exams to the crowd as Naruto waited in the tunnel connecting the stairs to the arena. It was long winded and introductory since it was her first "formal" address to the population. She'd informed him a few days ago who he'd be fighting and when. Oddly enough, out of his four opponents three were female and one was a jinchuriki. He was scheduled to fight two of them before the real matches began and then one between each subsequent round.

A chunin at the mouth of the tunnel waved Naruto forward. The light temporarily blinded him as he exited the tunnel—not adding a sunglasses mode on his blindfold was a bad idea. After regaining his eyesight, he walked toward the brown-haired, senbon chewing, examiner standing in the middle of the enormous arena. Crowd noise was surprisingly absent as he analyzed the battle grounds on his way; the majority of the ground was clear, but there were copses of trees lining the wall of the area. He couldn't see a water fixture anywhere, a little biased against people with water elements.

The chunin, using the term lightly, who intersected him in the center of the arena was one of his female opponents. She had short black hair and dark pink eyes. Her red uniform only had one sleeve and she worn a brown vest over the top of it. Kurotsuchi, granddaughter of the Tsuchikage, target for less than lethal tactics only. Tsunade herself had ordered him not to permanently maim or kill her in the interest of relations with Iwa. He somewhat doubted Iwa's commitment for the same for him. The smirk riding her face definitely spoke volumes.

"Alright, you'll start and stop on my signal no matter what," the senbon chewing jonin announced with his arms out. "Failure to heed my instructions will immediately disqualify you. Do you understand and agree to these terms?" Naruto and Kurotsuchi nodded. "At my right, we've got Naruto Uzumaki of Konoha, and at my left, we've got Kurotsuchi of Iwa." The crowd started making noise. "At my signal." He looked at both of them to make a final check as they adjusted their stances, "Begin!"

Naruto's streaking brace of shuriken was followed by five copies of him who had suddenly popped into existence. Kurotsuchi's hand snapped behind her and came back around in a flash, the katana now occupying her hand deflecting the projectiles. As her sword began cleaving into his clones, Naruto jumped backward and pulled a scroll out of his holster. With a burst of chakra, it unfurled, and water cascaded out from the seal written on it. He clasped his hands, _Water Release: Water Clone_, ten more clones formed themselves out of the water he'd dropped in the arena.

"What the hell's with all the clones?!" she screamed as the last shadow clone poofed, and a half seal allowed a barrage of mysterious off white globs to race from her mouth toward his water clones. Four clones dissolved into less viscous piles of the pale loogies. Three more Naruto clones ran in behind the line of their brethren, pressing her enough that she had to use her sword again. The clones each had their own smallswords out, but Kurotsuchi was making short work of them, even if she was getting soaked in the process.

Her sliding feet kicked up dust as her body bent and flexed through the utilitarian slashes and chops of her sword style. Drops of water flew off the blade of her katana as she finished with the last of the water clones. Which probably explains why she was so surprised when she killed two of the remaining three clones and they exploded, showering their immediate area with a milky white liquid. The third lost its head before it registered that something that wasn't water was all over her.

Kurotsuchi held out her arms and stood stock still as the excess dripped off, "Please tell me this isn't what I think it is," she pleaded, with horror etched across her face.

Naruto stopped abruptly at her reaction. _What?_

_**You've shot it into all of your girlfriend's orifices**_, Kurama snickered.

_A cum clone? She thinks I can make cum clones?_ It took all of Naruto's willpower to not break down on the spot laughing. _I can make poisons that I know the structure of, does that mean I could produce cum too? Would it be out of my mouth?_ He gagged a little before he was able to put a stop to that train of thought. _I could shoot bullets of it out of my mouth, call it 'Ninpo: Cum Shot'._ Naruto snickered to himself. _Damn it! Get back on track myself, we're in a fight here! _

"Sorry to tell you Darlin', but it's a hallucinogenic," Naruto drawled. The shurikens she'd deflected laid behind her, and he was in the perfect position to see one smokelessly turn into a clone. "Give up or I'll make the genjutsu I'm using into something terrible, instead of just the enormous octopus with four human legs, swords on the end of each of its tentacles, and the head of a bear clown that's standing behind you," he finished just as the clone turned into his description, and Kurotsuchi whipped around. Unfortunately for her, she'd taken such a large dose that the quick movement caused her to topple. More Narutos replaced the deflected projectiles, and Kurotsuchi was quickly buried in a dog pile.

"Winner, Naruto Uzumaki!" the proctor announced as soon as he saw a blade to the girl's throat. The crowd seemed to alternate cheers and boos—he guessed it was due to the bloodless nature of the match. "We'll have a fifteen minute intermission before Uzumaki faces his next opponent from Kumo!"

Naruto walked back to the tunnel he'd exited from. It sucked that he had to fight so many people today, but it wasn't like he couldn't see the benefits. So, he structured his plan to show Konoha's dominance around quickly and sneakily taking out his opponents with a different plan for each; that way, no one could cry foul or that he'd been lucky. The single opponents had it worse as far as he was concerned, they pretty much had to show their entire skill set before they could take him out. He took a seat on the hard ground and began breathing exercises.

Fifteen minutes later Naruto found himself standing next to the proctor again. Across from him stood a dark skinned teenager with short, spiky, white hair. He wore a single strap, white vest over, what appeared to be, a gray, hooded shirt. The long handle of a sword stuck up over his right shoulder.

The proctor raised his hands again, "And now ladies and gentlemen, we have your second exhibition match. Once again, Naruto Uzumaki of Konoha on my right and Omoi of Kumo on my left." He looked at both of them, "Are you ready?" Naruto kept a loose, lackadaisical stance, leading Omoi to do the same as he fiddled with the sucker in his mouth. They both nodded despite their apparent ill-preparedness. "Begin!" he shouted as he jumped away.

"How about I show you something no one's ever seen before?" Naruto asked.

"Give it your best shot," Omoi replied confidently.

"Alright then." Naruto smiled and raised his arm so his palm faced the Kumo ninja. He focused, and a perfect sphere of swirling blue chakra formed quickly in his palm. The wonderful thing about his Father's jutsu was that it was essentially self sustaining once it was formed.

"Is that the Rasengan?"

"Yes, but it's not even the coolest part." He covered the swirling mass in an extra chakra shell. The ball whooshed out of his palm, the chakra thread shoving it away from his hand. Omoi's eyes widened, and he titled his upper body back and to the side. It would have been enough to dodge the tethered Rasengan, except that it had been upgraded to flying by virtue of Naruto disconnecting the thread. Just as the mass of chakra was passing him, the inner chakra shell failed, and the small ball became a roiling typhoon of energy at least seven feet across. Omoi was tossed in the air by the expanding mass. Clods of dirt rained around them as the chakra storm carved a trough out of the ground.

The dark skinned ninja tumbled through the air, but landed on his feet. Despite his textbook landing, his feet still skidded along the ground for several yards. Naruto's grin was wide as Omoi looked up from his three point stance. Multiple Rasengans, fired from the clones he'd made while the Kumo ninja was in the air, cut through the space between them. A descending sword clanged as it met the partially unsheathed blade resting on his shoulder. He shoved wind chakra out the tenketsus in his back, relieving the pressure on his shoulder.

As Naruto spun to face Omoi, his smallsword whipped out horizontally. A distortion lashed out from the blade in a growing arc. The blade of wind barely grazed the tallest tuft of white hair as Omoi dashed under it. _Ninpo: Chakra Needle Cloud_, Naruto spewed out a cloud of chakra that polarized as it flew through the air, like iron filings near a magnet. Omoi dodged the swarm admirably, but still couldn't avoid getting tagged in the arm. He switched to a one handed grip to favor his useless arm, forcing him to abort the strike he was dashing in for. A quick feint was all he could manage and that was just so he could retreat.

Naruto stuck his sword in the ground and made two hand seals, _Water Release: Viscous Ensnarement._ A stream of high density, viscous liquid shot from his mouth only for it to soak the ground under the retreating ninja. Omoi slipped and fell into the sticky substance. The shadow clone that popped up next to the Kumo ninja with a blade to his throat was the decisive strike.

"Winner, Naruto Uzumaki!" the senbon chewer ended the match. Naruto's shot a stream of water at his trap, enough to dilute it so Omoi could get up.

"Damn, how long until I can use my arm again?" Omoi asked as he awkwardly levered himself out of the muck.

"The disruption to your chakra network should dissipate soon, and there's only minor tearing in the muscle. It should end up feeling sore like you've had a strenuous work out," Naruto explained.

"Alright ladies and gentlemen, we'll have a ten minute intermission before the start of the official matches!"

* * *

A tap on the shoulder brought Naruto out of his meditative state. The clone he'd made to wake him after the conclusion of the first round poofed and let their memories merge. Temari had forfeited rather than face her brother Gaara in the first match. Shikamaru also forfeited his match, but it was because he ran out of energy halfway through, making Neji the winner. Kankuro defeated Tenten with his superior use of tools, and Lee knocked out Choji with pure physicality.

Naruto made the all too familiar trek out to the center of the arena. Opposite him stood a short kunoichi. Black bangs framed her face, and the rest was held up in a bun behind her head. She wore a dark green turtleneck and matching baggy pants that ended just below her knee. Belted over that was a similar colored haori with cream colored accents.

Just as the proctor was going to raise his arms to announce the match, white feathers began falling from the sky. The Sharingan in Naruto's left eye blazed into life and broke the genjutsu. "Is Kiri with us?" he demanded of the girl across from him. A man with short, spiky, black hair landed next to Haku. He was one of the few people slightly taller than Naruto.

He pulled a massive sword from his back and said, "We're the only Kiri ninja here. We'll help to preserve relations, and because this is shaping up to be a good fight," he amended while a grin spread across his face. With a quick snap of his arm the sword spun horizontally through the air, bisecting and maiming a group of Oto ninja who had just jumped into the arena. "Haku, let's go," he commanded as he nearly disappeared in a burst of speed. Senbon flew from her fingertips as she followed him at an even faster clip.

The sounds of destruction exploded near the Hokage's tower, accompanied by a large cloud of pale smoke.

_**You need to get over there now!**_ Kurama shouted. _**That was Shukaku's chakra!**_

_Damn it all to hell,_ Naruto lamented as he disappeared in a shunshin.

He landed on a roof overlooking the large intersection in front of the tower. Unfortunately for Konoha, it was currently being occupied by a giant sand monster with black tattoos stretching all over it. The fact that it was cackling madly didn't inspire much confidence either.

_**It looks like Shukaku is possessing its container**_.

_Good thing we prepared for this then, eh?_ Naruto took a strip of paper in each hand. A surge of wind chakra activated and stiffened the seals. The rigid pieces flew toward the enormous beast, who didn't even feel them pierce its sandy hide. Starting from the entry points, the black lines for six feet around them began to disappear. Chakra from the sand that made up the monster's body flowed into his seals, and the sand started falling away. As the seals overloaded, they exploded. Sand flew off of Shukaku as the energy launched the inert sand and created even more damage. More explosions rocked the Biju when the other three volleys he'd thrown began to activate.

Its massive head whipped to the side to find where the barrage was coming from. An asleep Gaara was slumped, buried up to his waist in the forehead of the monster. Naruto slung as many of the seals as he could as fast as he could at the head of Shukaku. Even a super-powered chakra monster had to pay heed to physics, and there was no way that it could shift itself so quickly. By dint of the wind chakra, they even pierced through the defensive wall of sand it tried to form.

Between the chakra drain and the resulting explosions, Gaara's unconscious body tumbled towards the earth in a torrent of sand. Bandages cut through the waterfall of sand from an adjacent roof. Naruto leapt towards the anchor of the bandages as they dragged the container's limp body over. As the red head's body crested the roof, he slapped several chakra restraining seals on him.

"Take him to T and I," he ordered the clone who'd snared him with the bandages. Naruto looked around the intersection; some buildings were damaged, but it could have been a lot worse. There were literal tons of sands everywhere—it wasn't going to be fun to clean up. He took a moment to look around, and it didn't really seem like an invasion. In fact, the closest ninjas were quite a ways away, but he'd seen Suna and Oto ninja enter the arena. Maybe they were all just avoiding the area around the Hokage tower because Shukaku was supposed to be there? There didn't appear to be that much damage going on either. Twenty clones came into existence around him and quickly jumped away, their orders already established.

He started back toward the arena, the only place where he knew some semblance of leadership existed. Along the way, he gathered wind chakra at his fingertips and released it whenever he saw an enemy. The bursts formed into swarms of needles, except they did completely physical damage unlike the pure chakra ones. A memory filtered into his head, and he immediately changed his course. Blue and red chakra flickered off of him as he pumped his body full of it in preparation for a shunshin.

Naruto dropped out of the shunshin at the edge of a training ground. Anko laid on her back in the middle of the training ground. Her bloodied chest shuddered with each breath. Slashes crossed her entire body, and there seemed to be an ocean of blood under her. His feet squelched in the muddied ground as he rushed to her side. A small wave of mud cascaded out from his knees as he slid to the ground next to her.

"Damn it Anko!" She mumbled something as cupped her injured face. Two clones popped into existence, and they quickly began writing on Anko's and Naruto's neck with the sealing sets he'd unsealed from his arm. "Come on, just stay awake a little longer," he pleaded. "Everything's going to be alright." Her eyes were glazed, but she continued breathing. The words that were spilling out of her mouth made no sense, but she was trying. Time seemed to stretch as he knelt cradling her broken body, waiting for the clones to finish their work. Tears flowed freely down his face as his frustration mounted, each ragged breath a count down to the inevitable.

The clones disappeared, and Anko was still breathing. He placed his index and middle fingers of one hand on the middle of Anko's seal, and his other hand's on the center of his. He pushed the barest amount of chakra into both at the same time, and the seals activated. Chakra was ripped from him, and then he began to scream.

* * *

His gumstuck eyelids broke apart and were immediately closed when the bright light stabbed into his eyes. A pained moan slipped out of his mouth as he tried to roll over. Everything seemed to hurt. He sealessly made a shadow clone, but stopped short of dispelling it when pain radiated out from his core. Once he had himself back under control, he found his center and dispelled the clone. Every memory short of how he looked was filtered out.

Naruto laid in a hospital bed, wrapped head to toe in bandages. The only visible pieces of skin were his hands, the area around his eyes, and his lips. He couldn't see any blood soaking through the bandages, so that was more than likely a good sign. Figuring out what happened to his chakra was first on his list since no one was in the room when he woke up.

_Kurama, you there?_

_**I am, you fool.**_

_What?_

_**You screwed up the seal and transferred all of her injuries to yourself.**_

_That means she's alright_, Naruto thought, relieved.

_**She is, but you've given yourself a cursed seal. Not to mention, I had to nearly destroy your chakra network healing you**_, Kurama spat angrily. _**Since my chakra is not your own, you're going to **__**have scars and lots of them for a long time.**_

_Roll that back. A cursed seal?_

_**Yes, one of the errors in your array made the seal take too much chakra. You've created a sympathetic link between your girlfriend's pain and you.**_

_So, any pain she feels I get to feel too? Is it direct transference or just the pain?_

_**Just the pain, but of course it's magnified as per that foolish seal.**_

The door opened, and a healthy looking Anko stepped through. It brought a grin to Naruto's face, even if it was mostly covered by bandages.

"Hey, Ko-chan," he greeted in a raspy voice. Anko rushed over to the bed as Naruto waved at her.

Her hand closed around his, "Nice to see you up idiot," she said with tears threatening to fall from her eyes. "Why do you have to be such a romantic? Do you know how scared I was?" her voice nearly broke.

"Heh, we're both still here love."

"And what about this mark that's still on my neck?"

"I screwed up the seal, I've got one too." He winced as he reached up to pull the bandages aside from his neck.

"What's it do?"

"I want to say 'Nothing you've got to worry about' and act all cool," Naruto chuckled, "but I know if I don't tell you, you'll kick my ass later." Anko's face grew hesitant and confused at that. "Until it fades or I remove it, any pain you experience will be transferred to me."

"Damn it Naruto! Why'd you have to use such a dangerous seal?" Tears began to silently roll down her face. "Now, because of me, you're wounded, scarred, and cursed."

He smiled, "I don't care about any of that, you're alive."

"But it was my fault, I tried to kill Orochimaru," she trailed off.

"I don't blame you, even if you want me to." He'd long known that Anko would try to kill Orochimaru the moment she knew he was in the area, and he also knew that there was a high chance of her being injured, perhaps critically, during the battle. It was the main reason he'd brushed up on medical seals. Of course, he hadn't thought the need would be so dire, and he hadn't factored in making an incorrect seal. Any anger he would have felt for her getting herself injured was swept away by his worry and forewarning. "How long has it been?" he asked.

"It was only yesterday, we didn't take any significant losses thanks to your clones and you taking out the Ichibi container." Something lit up in her memory and she added, "There's people from Kiri here to see you too, but I didn't let them in yet."

"Huh? Why?"

"I didn't ask, but one of them is a pretty good looking waif."

"Should we see what they want? I'd rather just get it over with if they're here and you're here."

"Alright, if you're sure," she agreed reluctantly.

Anko left the room for an undetermined amount of time while Naruto lamented the lack of a visible clock. She returned with the girl he was supposed to have a match with before the invasion kicked off. Except this time she was dressed in a pink yukata with a black choker, and her hair was unbound.

"Haku was it?" Naruto asked as Anko shut the door behind them.

"That is correct Naruto-san," she gave a small bow.

"Wasn't there a big guy with a big sword with you?"

"Zabuza-sama doesn't do well in negotiations," she sighed with a bit of a frown.

"Well, lay it out for us Haku-chan," Anko offered as he took a seat at the foot of Naruto's bed.

"I'm a boy," Haku sighed again.

"What, really?" Naruto wondered. He noticed the black choker and remembered the turtleneck, and it finally clicked into realization. "You're a legitimate trap! That is hilarious. Just recently I was musing on them."

"I don't really appreciate that," Haku responded carefully.

"Ah, I didn't mean to insinuate anything other than you pass really well and look legitimately bangable."

"It's okay," he recomposed himself. "What many outside of Kiri do not know is that there is a cold civil war going on. The Mizukage, Yagura, has moved the village policies more and more toward our nickname 'the Bloody Mist'. We lose countless lives in pointless tournaments and from the ridiculous zero tolerance policies dealing with treason and desertion."

"When you say 'cold', you mean that it isn't outright war right now?" Anko wondered.

"Sides are being drawn. There are many who believe we are being strangled under Yagura and that our village will soon die, but the middle ground will not be swayed unless one side has a definitive advantage. The Mizukage is a jinchuriki."

"And you need someone who can deal with jinchurikis," Naruto guessed.

"Yes, it will help greatly when the propaganda begins."

"I can't promise everything, but I'll do what I can. All I want from it is some money, some goodwill, and the chance to pepper you with questions relating to traps."

Haku sighed, "Fine."

* * *

A/N the Latter: If there were no significant losses, who were the insignificant ones? What actually happened after Naruto passed out? What happened to Orochimaru, Itachi, and Sasori?

Naruto didn't really get to cut loose as hard as I expected he would, bastard always gets to plan too much. Oddly enough, I found out Yagura was a dick even before he got mind raped while I was poking around in the Naruto wikia and databooks. So yes, the bloodlines wars were stopped, but regular war was only postponed. And this time it's not as clear cut.

Manga Spoiler Rant:

Despite the fact that I thought it was kind of annoying that Orochimaru suddenly knew a way to pull souls out of the Shinigami's belly, I have been pleasantly surprised by the interaction between the Hokages. Hashirama and Tobirama are hilarious together. Plus, the chapter out today showed their badassness. I also really hope they get to get in on the war instead of superpowering Sasuke, that would be amazing.


	10. Disinterment

Disclaimer: I don't own what I don't own.

A/N: Our chapter today is a tad longer than usual, somewhere around 25% more. Some of the overarching plot begins to come into play in this chapter, and I just had to give it a little extra love.

Pour a little out for Hellblazer, which concludes its original run today with its 300th issue. It's getting ported to the "New 52" under the title Constantine, but I have my doubts on how well they'll treat the book.

As usual, thanks for all the reviews, favorites, and follows.

Enjoy.

* * *

Papers crinkled and shuffled as Naruto shifted in his bed. He'd been confined to the hospital for a week, even though he was essentially healed the day he woke up. The only thing that had taken more time was his chakra network. Since they had him trapped in one place for an extended period of time, Guren and Tsunade had dropped all the sealing work they could on him. Guren's work he could easily deal with, she only needed single, specific seals because he'd bolstered her reserves of the regulars before the exam finals had begun, but Tsunade's work was much more intensive, both physically and in terms of research. It irked him a little, Guren probably didn't know, but Tsunade definitely knew that he had to work on isolating the accidental connection he'd created between Anko and himself.

_Maybe I should take up wearing glasses over my blindfold. It just feels right with all the paperwork they're making me do, and it would just be amusing._ Once he'd had a moment to think about it, he'd realized what a poor decision it was to try to use that medical seal on Anko. It wasn't that he didn't want her healed, or that he even cared about the new set of scars he was sporting; it was just really stupid to try and hand draw a seal in that situation. _Well, I'll only have to look in a mirror to remind myself not to make stupid decisions I suppose._

The seal, correctly drawn, was supposed to draw and filter his chakra so that the recipient could use his regenerative chakra like their own. His messed up version seemed to have taken all the energy from his body, specifically where Anko had been injured; it essentially transferred all her injuries to him as his cells died, leaving him with lines of necrotic tissue all over his body. Kurama had used what freedom Naruto gave him to destroy those cells immediately, which left him in just as bad a state as Anko.

A shadow clone poofed into existence next to his bed with only the smallest amount of pain in his chakra network. The annoying thing was that the more he used chakra the quicker his pathways would heal, but that didn't mean it didn't hurt like hell when he started pushing it through just after the accident. His doppelganger cleaned all the papers off his bed and sealed them into a scroll sitting on the end table.

The door to his room clicked open, and Anko entered. "Perfect timing Ko-chan," Naruto greeted as his clone disappeared. "Get assigned to do anything fun this morning?"

"Tch, no," she replied tersely. Naruto's bed protested with a small squeak as Anko clambered onto it. She made herself comfortable by lowering the back of the bed and burrowing under the blankets to snuggle up next to him. "Everyone chunin and below is getting tasked with the rebuilding, so they made me pull guard duty."

"Oh? Guess I'm the lucky one then, all I need is a hundred memories of moving rubble or building fences." Anko remained silent, and Naruto mentally berated himself. For the first few days Anko hadn't been able to look at him without watery eyes and a wince, and he had to go and remind her of why he was in the hospital. She'd told him the entire story the first night he'd been conscious. Apparently, she sought out Orochimaru and was outclassed except for a small advantage when he tried to activate her curse seal and nothing happened. After that, it had been nearly all swordplay, and as awesome as Naruto's trench coat had been, it couldn't stand up against the assault of a Sannin for long. The only reason she was alive when Naruto arrived was because Itachi intervened and moved the battle elsewhere.

"Anko, we've been over this," he said tiredly. "I saved you at the cost of pain and a few beauty marks, that's a trade I'll make all day. Just forget about it."

"No!" she practically yelled. "It was... No one's ever done anything like that for me before. I'm not just going to forget it," Anko promised.

"Alright, then lavish me with your praise, and by 'praise', I mean 'medicinal blow jobs'."

"So what would you call the ones I've been giving you?" she wondered.

"Damn, you're right. I guess I wasted my reward," Naruto grinned.

Anko sighed, "That was terrible. Why am I the only one who has to hear shit like that?"

"Just one of the perks, Love."

"Whatever, the nurse at the front desk said you get to get out of here this afternoon," Naruto whooped, interrupting her. "So, let's take a quick nap, then we'll get you out of here and grab some real food." His arm tightened around her as his thoughts ground down. Truthfully, he had been relieved when Anko still wanted to see him. There were so many variables to take into account that he'd let the scared little kid inside of him inject doubt. He doubted he'd ever be getting rid of it, but it felt incredibly nice every time his trust in her was reaffirmed; so, maybe he could deal with it.

* * *

"I just got out of the hospital you know," Naruto pointed out, annoyed. He'd only gotten a single night at home before he'd been called to the Hokage's office.

"If I recall correctly, you were trying everything you could to get out before now, so that argument isn't carrying a lot of weight with me right now. Besides, you're the one who opened negotiations with them in the first place, without my authorization I might add," Tsunade argued.

He sighed, "Why isn't Anko here? She's the team leader."

"I already talked with her about it while you were indisposed."

"And she couldn't tell me about it?"

"I wanted to see you before you had to leave," she admitted. "I also wanted to get some ideas from you, so I could get a birthday present together for you by the time you get back."

Naruto rubbed the back of his neck, "Sorry for being snippy. It's just that I don't enjoy the idea of spending my birthday in a simultaneously cold and incredibly humid place." He tapped his chin with a finger, "Your present could be telling me what Orochimaru was doing here during the invasion."

"He tried to get his hands on Sasuke again. Thankfully, Anko distracted him long enough for Itachi to take over," she explained. Naruto's anger peaked during her explanation. Anko's fight was just a distraction? She could have died! He took a deep breath to calm himself down. "Ah, I didn't mean it like that," she appended.

"I know. So, who's coming with us?"

"Shikamaru Nara, Hana Inuzuka, and Yugao Uzuki. You're leaving in three days."

* * *

Naruto laid on the roof of the guard post at the gates. The sun was barely up, and the structure was cooling his back nicely. Myriad thoughts ran through his head, there were so many loose ends he dealt with to prepare for his departure in an hour or two. Karin had proven herself competent medical personnel during the invasion, Tsunade had let him know that she would taking her on as an apprentice immediately. He'd dropped two scrolls off with Guren, one contained an enormous amount of her regular seals, and the other high powered shadow clones; they were for any back up of special orders, or if she just needed to talk. Kurenai had understood, being a ninja long enough to become a jonin. His thoughts trailed off.

_Did I really only need to inform three people about my leaving? I guess five if you add in Tsunade and Anko. God, that's depressing._ He stopped that train of thought there. _Wait a minute, Anko, Kurenai, Tsunade, Karen, and Guren. Why are they all women? I don't think I'm friends with any males. The closest would be, what, like Sasori or Itachi? Even more depressing. Alright! It's time to make some dude friends._

Once he thought of Sasori, his mind turned to the scroll, and the hastily scribbled note, he'd found in his lab when he went to seal everything up for the trip. Sasori praised his performance, but lamented the lack of puppetry. The scroll contained the instructions on how to make human puppets. Naruto hadn't made it past the very beginning, because he wasn't sure he would be able to not use it. With his use of shadow clones, puppetry's greatest weakness, the fact that you had to tie up your hands to control them, was eliminated. As it was, there wasn't a real reason to use full sized puppets, since his clones could do a better job, aside from their durability. But puppets that had chakra networks, and possible Kekkei Genkai on top of that, would be worth his trouble.

_Kurama, you up in there?_ After he didn't receive a reply after a few minutes, he let it drop. Recently, the Biju had been sleeping more and more, but he didn't have anything concrete on why. He'd wanted to run the idea of Kurama occupying a human puppet as a middle step in releasing him.

Someone landed next to him on the roof. His newly opened eyes recovered from the glare just in time to catch Anko leaning over him.

"You're hanging out of your new coat there, Love."

"Nothin' you haven't seen," she said, cupping breasts only covered by chakra armor mesh. He'd finished an upgraded coat for her after the end of his hospital stay and lots of clone hours. Guren and her engineer had also been nice enough to upgrade her mesh armor before he sealed that too.

"True, but I don't think we have time to fuck before everyone else gets here."

She slunk down, so she was lying across his chest. One hand pulled down his mask, so her tongue could trace his jawline; the other was snaking its way under his belt as she asked throatily, "Wanna race the clock?"

"As much as we're all interested in hearing your _activities_, we should probably get ready to leave," a voice said from the ground. Naruto wrapped an arm around Anko and used careful wind chakra expulsion to flip them off the roof.

"Let's do it again!" Anko squealed.

Naruto coughed, "How about we do a quick introduction?"

A woman with long, straight, purple hair and a sword on her back began, "Yugao Uzuki, kenjutsu, fire natured." She wore the standard ANBU attire, gray armor over tight black clothing.

"Shikamaru Nara, thinking, shadows."

"Hana Inuzuka, medic, clan techniques."

"Anko Mitarashi, dango, Whiskers-chan," she said, wrapping her arms around Naruto's neck just before she jumped off the ground. He, by dint of not wishing to topple forward onto the ground, caught her in a princess carry. "This is Whiskers-chan, he's smart, sexy, and he will probably be filling all my holes up every night for the duration of this mission. So, this is my formal invitation for all of you to feel free to join us anytime! Even Lazy-kun!"

"Even Shikamaru?" Naruto wondered absently. Everyone seemed to have been previously inoculated with Anko's personality, so none of them reacted beyond a raised eyebrow or a slightly more open mouth.

"A hole's a hole right?" she chirped as she set her feet back on the ground.

"I guess?" Naruto sighed. Sometimes Anko's boisterous, overly sexual persona got on even his nerves. He felt a little guilty every time, but he supposed it was expected. No one ever got along perfectly right? The varied sexual adventures did do a little to salve that at least. "Naruto Uzumaki, ninjutsu, sealing," he introduced. "Who's lead on this by the way?" Everyone's gazes centered firmly and disturbingly on him. "Seriously?"

"I think Tsunade said something to the effect of 'He started it, it's his problem' and then something about leadership skills," Anko informed cheerfully.

"Awesome," he pinched the bridge of his nose. "Alright, let's get out of here then." As they began to leap through the trees toward their destination, Naruto caught a signal from Anko to hold back.

After taking the rearguard and letting the other gain a little distance, she cleared her throat, "Sorry."

"It's alright Ko-chan. If it was a big deal I would've mentioned it." Naruto absently wondered if anything he did annoyed her. Maybe when he got excited about a jutsu? It worried him slightly that she never really spoke out about that sort of thing. "Just make sure you tell me if you've got something to get off your chest, okay?"

* * *

After a few days of travel, they'd found the abandoned island that was to the north and west of Wave. They followed the course of a river through forested hills and finally came upon the ruins. A valley was dominated by the stone ruins, ruins that appeared to be the remnants of extremely tall buildings. As they reached the edge of the village proper, Naruto ran his fingertips over the swirl engraved into a partially collapsed pillar. Tsunade's true birthday present. Their orders were to construct an outpost so funneling materiel to the rebels would be that much easier. Of course, she'd suggested that the island might make a good place for it, and she'd even made him team leader.

_I'm going to have to find some way to thank her when we get back._ The chance to explore his ancestral home and even the possibility of restoring some portion of it, were things that he had no idea how to repay. "Alright, let's sweep the ruins and find a good place to bed down for tonight." He doubted very much that there was anyone on the island, it was a little high profile for a base that wasn't sponsored by a hidden village, and it seemed like a poor decision to use it if you weren't from Konoha. Naruto wasn't really sure where the property sat at present in terms of ownership, but Konoha had been the last ally of Uzushio before its destruction and seemed to retain a sense of obligation towards it. At least, the Uzumaki swirl was still present on the majority of flak jackets.

* * *

The next morning, the group sat just inside the tree line on the eastern side of the island. They were supposed to be receiving a group to "liaison" between themselves and the rebel forces, it wouldn't do the rebels much good if Konoha couldn't deliver the right stuff he supposed.

A skiff slowly floated out of the mist blanketing the water. Four figures stood in boat. Two he knew, Haku and Zabuza were dressed the same as when he saw them during the finals, but the others were a mystery. At the prow of the vessel was a slender woman with striking red hair held in a top knot. She wore a blue dress over a mesh top, and as they got closer, he could see hair trailing down her back all the way to her waist—not to mention the dress showing some impressive cleavage. He wasn't looking forward to all the comments Anko was going to make. Next to her stood a man with blue hair styled up into a point. Paper tags hung from his ears, and a patch sat over his right eye.

One of Naruto's clones walked out of the trees to wait along the coastline. As the skiff grew closer, it waded out into the water to guide the boat to the shore. The bottom of the vessel scraped up onto the rock strewn beach. Naruto's group walked out of the trees just in time for him to offer a hand to the red head as she was disembarking.

"Well, it's always nice to meet a gentleman when one has to do these things," she commented, with a bit of a purr.

"My pleasure Miss."

"How about we go somewhere a little more comfortable to discuss our relationship?" the red head suggested.

"My, my, I find you remind me of someone," Naruto said while they walked toward the Konoha group. He wasn't looking forward to having her and Anko together, at least she used double entendres instead of being explicit about it. "How about we move to the staging area?" he proposed when they joined the others. The walk into the woods was quiet and tense, presumably the Kiri ninja were worried about an ambush. Only five minutes passed before they walked into a small clearing where a table and chairs were set up under a tent.  
Naruto very much wanted to tune out, but since Tsunade had given him the double edged sword of leadership, he felt obligated to smooth the process along.

"I don't suppose you'd happen to know if you have any Uzumaki in you?" Naruto asked the red head after everyone was seated.

"The name's Mei Terumi, and I'm not sure..." she trailed off.

"Would you like some?" Anko quipped.

He pinched the bridge of his nose, _I guess I walked right into that one_. "Naruto Uzumaki. Trench coat is Anko Mitarashi, straight hair is Yugao Uzuki, face tattoos is Hana Inuzuka, and pineapple head is Shikamaru Nara."

"Oh, I think I can get behind that game," Mei responded cheerfully. "Eye patch is Ao, no brows is Zabuza Momochi, and pretty boy is Haku."

"So now that we've gotten that out of the way, who's liaising and what do we have to order?"

"I would've liked to leave Zabuza here with you, but I fear he would be underutilized," Mei explained. "I think Haku would be a better fit." Ao reached into a pouch and handed a sealed scroll across the table. "Our requests. Also, I'm told you're a seal master."

"I'm a reasonable facsimile."

"Good. I've left Haku with a list of things to talk with you about. You know, explore some possibilities." Naruto nodded to the young man. "Unfortunately, we'll have to cut this short," Mei informed them, rising from her seat. "As much as I'd like to explore the possibilities of the Uzumaki, I fear we'll be missed if we linger here too long. Haku will keep in touch with us."

"Sorry we couldn't accommodate you further, please be careful on your return trip," Naruto bowed as they left the clearing. He viewed it as a sign of trust that they didn't escort them back off the island. Of course, that didn't mean that there weren't shadow clones henged as animals randomly observing. "Well, that wasn't awkward or anything." The chair creaked as he slumped into it. "Hey Haku, how've you been these last, what, two weeks?"

"It's been quite hectic. Though, I'm glad to see you have recovered Naruto-san," he said politely.

"Thanks. So Anko-chan, do you happen to have a summon that can get to the Hokage with this?"

"Hmm," she groped her chin with a hand, "Water or land is easy, but the two together not so much."

"Don't worry about it, I'll just send a clone." One poofed into existence next to him. He tossed the sealed scroll, and four more strips of paper he pulled out of his hip pouch. The clone nodded, changed his clothes to camouflage as much as he could, and sprinted off in the direction of Konoha. "Chakra storage seals, never leave home without 'em. Also not a bad way to heal your chakra network if you have to run chakra through to do it." Hopefully his chakra control would be maintained, or even get a nice little boost, when his clone water walked all the way to the mainland.

* * *

Two weeks later, Naruto walked through a corridor covered in dust and cobwebs. The door to the outside had grated open when he swiped his blood over the Uzumaki swirl carved into the center of it. After a few dozen feet, the stone corridor turned into a spiral staircase. There were no built into light fixtures, the only way he could see through the darkness was the small flame sitting on the palm of his hand. He didn't know how long it took to descend into the infinite darkness, but he soon started counting steps. The deeper he went, the more dense the musty air got. When he came upon the landing, his count stood at two-thousand one-hundred and ninety-seven.

Another short, darkened hallway lead him to a thick, metal banded, wooden door. His hand wrapped around the handle and quickly retracted, throwing a stream of red droplets against the wall and floor. Naruto cursed the thing, but he stopped as the door creaked open on its own. _Another blood seal? How paranoid were these people?_ The room beyond the doorway was dark as well, but as soon as he passed over the threshold, seals lit up all over the floor and ceiling.

His jaw nearly unhinged as his head craned upwards. Eight levels of nearly twenty foot tall bookcases ran a ring all the way around the octagonal room. Each side had to be at least forty feet long, and every piece of bookshelf visible from the bottom floor was filled. _I wonder why there weren't more blood seals._ The bottom level's walls were packed with sundry items: weapons, scrolls, armor, and precious metals and gems. In the center of the room, four translucent, crystal obelisks sat at the corners of a raised, stone dais. At the center of the square platform was a large, irregular chunk of crystal.

He walked slowly up the stairs. The platform was only raised a few feet off the ground. As he approached an obelisk, he could make out incredibly small engravings. They were so small and dense that the clear crystal only appeared translucent from a distance. _Seals? What in the hell takes this many seals?_ Another obelisk showed nearly the same kinds of seals. _Four points... Maybe a barrier?_

The more he looked at the center crystal, the more it started to look like a flame. It was only two-dimensional, but the sheet was still nearly a foot thick. However, the main attraction for him was the enormous swirl carved into the front. More seals were carved into the bottom of the channel that made up the swirl. _What the hell is this?_ _Some sort of plaque wouldn't have gone amiss._ Sixteen shadow clones popped into existence, and each took up studying a side of an obelisk.

Some time later the clones disappeared. _Fuck, did they just run out of chakra?_ He staggered back from the center crystal slightly as he was barraged with information. _Space-time seals? _Around two hours of studying gave him barely anything solid. All the obelisks appeared to have slightly different, giant, space-time sealing arrays. As far as he could tell, the flame crystal was the controller and power source. For the arrays that he saw, though, a massive power source would be required. It made him wonder exactly what type of energy the crystal harnessed or contained. _I should get back._ Before he left, he made one more clone to the touch the center crystal as he stood in the doorway. The clone disappeared. Naruto didn't receive any memories, and his blood ran just a little cold. _Great idea Naruto! Just go around molesting the incredibly complex sealing arrays._

He didn't count steps on the way back up. Anko was relatively easy to find, even with their joining seal locked, Naruto could still suss out her general direction. It didn't seem like he'd get around to finding a way to remove it anytime soon after his discovery. Thirty clones had stayed in the room to peruse the books, and that put him in a volatile position. Keeping his chakra levels fairly high was a necessity, just in case Yagura's men found them.

"Hey," Anko greeted casually. She apparently had decided to take her dango to eat while reclining in a tree.

"We need to talk alone."Anko's expression immediately shifted from carefree to concerned, and she jumped down as Naruto set up a privacy barrier. The discoveries he'd made, the questions he had, they all came spilling out in a torrent. She gamely remained quiet until he'd exhausted his energy in the explanation, but his mind was still sprinting and splitting down random tangents. Not to mention the frantic energy he was exuding.

"Naruto," she said, settling her hands on his shoulders. Anko yanked him down, and pressed her lips against his. Her tongue slipped into his mouth, and they enjoyed each other for a few minutes. Pulling away, she asked, "How do you feel now?"

"Better."

"You just needed to calm down." She patted him on the chest, "You know I'm with you for anything you want to do. Just be careful."

"Thanks, Love."

"If you really want to blow off some steam, I think I've got an idea." Anko's hands were clasped behind her back, showcasing her not unexceptional bust as she leaned forward.

"And what's that?"

"Well, it would really turn me on to watch you dominate Trap-kun," she purred.

"Dominate him?"

"Get a little rough with him, make him deep throat your cock, just hammer into him relentlessly while he eats my pussy."

"I didn't know you were into boys' love Anko-chan," Naruto teased. _Can I really do that?I guess, I should really be asking myself, how will I feel about doing that? _

"Not particularly. I'm not sure why, but watching you stretch mouths and throats and feeling them moan into my pussy as you fill them up..." she practically shivered and let out a little moan. "So, I wanted to try it with a guy. I know you haven't tried a guy before, so I figured we could start out with a real twink."

"This is something you really want, huh?"

"I don't want to pressure you, 'cause then it wouldn't be fun, but Haku looks like a girl. Plus, you get to watch me while you fuck him, and I think the only thing that would be different than fucking my ass, would be that you get to go doggy style and see my tits at the same time."

"Convince him and we'll do it." He couldn't say no. There was some amount of obligation there, but even if there wasn't, it was something she'd explicitly asked him for. She never explicitly asked him for anything. Well, maybe dango and sake, but he'd been enjoying the fruits of her open mentality, so if she really wanted to expand their sexual horizons, who was he to deny it? Maybe they could do it mostly clothed? The blow job wasn't worrying, Haku's face was extremely effeminate, but there was a difference between the body of a male and female, in the hips especially. _I should just quit worrying. I told her I would do it, so I'll do it. I could always end up enjoying it, right?_

"How do you feel now?"

"Huh?" Then the realization hit him, "Oh, that was sneaky." He'd completely forgotten about anything that wasn't a potential, impending, two male threesome. Maintaining his composure around the library and weird crystal would be a challenge, but it was necessary. They didn't have the safety net of Konoha to fall back on while they were at the outpost. "So, do you really want to do that?"

"I'd like to, if you think you can handle it."

"If it's Haku, I can probably power through for you, even if I find it not to my liking, so go ahead and try to get it going, Love."

"Awesome, how about a nooner?"

* * *

A little over a week later, Naruto sat at a table in one of the temporary houses his clones had constructed. Five sticks of dango were stacked in front of him. They were part of his birthday present from Anko. She sat across from him, her elbows propped up on the table and her head resting in her hands. He bit into one and pulled it off the stick. Chewing slowly, he drew out the process for as long as he could.

"They're delicious," Naruto smiled. She'd asked him what he wanted, and his half joking answer was simply: something that she'd made herself. Now that he'd tasted her cooking, he had to wonder why she didn't cook more often; it was pretty good—fairly comparable to a stand, and it was surprisingly nice to eat something she'd made. As Anko's grin stretched across her face, her hand dipped into one of her trench coat pockets. The thin box that slid across the table was simple and square, about half a foot to a side.

He set aside his dango for a moment. The bottom of the container thudded softly onto the table as he lifted off the top. Sitting on a bed of dark cloth was a necklace. Thick braided wire threaded through a rectangular leather pad on one end; on the other, it passed through three equally spaced stone beads. His fingertips brushed across the polished, dark gray stones in the shape of commas. They were polished to such a degree that they had a sheen and felt completely smooth, except for the swirls carved into the body. The beads didn't move as he picked up his gift; they remained in position, with their tails curving downward.

"The braided wire is actually chakra wire that I may have borrowed from your supplies," Anko began to explain. "I put the leather strap on the back so, even if someone grabbed and yanked on it, it wouldn't cut into your spine or anything. I made the beads from pieces of stone I picked from the ruins while we were dicking around in there, and it just didn't feel right not to give them an Uzumaki swirl."

Naruto was nearly speechless, "Wow, I don't know what to say other than I love it." He dropped it over his head and began adjusting it so it rested just so.

"If I were as cheesily romantic as you, I might say that it's so, wherever you go, you'll always have a piece of your clan with you."

Just as Naruto was about to launch, what he was sure would be, a witty rejoinder, a boom suddenly sounded. The door slammed open as they both rushed out of the building. Quickly dispersing plumes of smoke could be easily seen over the hills to the north. Their chakra flared as they began a hurried sprint to the location of a probable battle.

Only three minutes passed before they let their momentum carry them down from the canopy and into an area where the vegetation had been burned away and was still smoldering. Dark blue, volatile chakra covered someone who stood in the middle of the cleared area. Wisps of chakra flowed off of them like flames, and fires sprung up around their feet. Yugao was hunched at the edge of the treeline, panting. Most of her armor was charred black, and the skin of her left arm was red and puffy. The sword in her right hand trembled slightly, but a fierce look of determination was plastered across her ash covered face.

A barrage of translucent senbon shot from the trees to the right of Naruto, forcing the chakra person back. The thin black line that connected to their shadow as they landed broke almost immediately.

"Get them stationary for me. I have an idea," Naruto decided. Anko just gave a quick nod and leapt forward to join the fight. He concentrated on the air, humid as it was, and a globe of water began to form from tiny droplets being pulled out of the air around it.

Ten seconds later the ball was twice as large as his head. While it was forming, Anko had engaged the enemy in bursts of taijutsu, only avoiding burns because of her reinforced coat. Naruto, and the clones he'd summoned, fired the condensed water at the enemy as everyone disengaged. Clods of earth sprayed everywhere as the closest five underground clones shot up right around where the chakra enemy dodged to. The chakra laced liquid sprung up from the ground to wrap tendrils around them. Quickly, the rest of the water coalesced into a large sphere, completely encasing the chakra thing. "Water Style: Water Prison," a clone spoke, with an arm lodged in the water. Only one other clone survived the quick counter attacking the monster had done before getting captured.

_**… Matatabi... **_Kurama mumbled.

_What was that?_ He waited a few seconds before yelling into his mind, _Kurama? Kurama! Damn!_ Four clones landed around the water prison, marking the corners of a square. The thing in the prison started to struggle more valiantly.

"It's heating the water," the clone maintaining the prison warned. The four posts of the square were already flying through the fifty-nine hand seals his technique was currently stuck at.

"Four Post Chakra Sealing!" the clones shouted in unison as the prison lost its shape and the clone inside disappeared. The chakra monster tried to leap out, but only succeeded in slamming itself against the translucent, blue-white box that sprung up around it. Eight chains, the same color as the barrier, shot out from the corner's of the box. Its speed and maneuverability were very high, but eventually it was caught in the tangled web of chains. They pulled taut, suspending the thing in the center of the box; chakra was constantly being pulled out through the chains and used to reinforce the barrier and give the clones energy. He was really happy he'd included soundproofing in the jutsu, because the way its mouth was stuck open since it'd been caught lead him to believe the racket would be enormous.

"Jutsu dry run, success," Naruto said as walked up to Anko. Three of his clones were using some basic medical jutsus on a pained looking Yugao, while another searched for their medic. Shikamaru and Haku moved in from their respective positions to stand guard near the injured ANBU.

"So how long do we have to wait for this thing to work," Anko wondered while she studied his handywork.

"No idea." _Kurama, you up yet?_ He didn't get a response. "Does this, whatever it is, look like a jinchuriki to you?"

"I wouldn't even know where to begin identifying one," she said flippantly.

"Well, I can use a chakra cloak, and the information Mei gave us on Yagura said he could use one too. Plus, its got a ton of chakra." Before anything else could be said, the chakra receded to show a blond haired, petite woman. Her hair was held in a long ponytail, and she wore a black and purple shirt with black pants. Bandages were wrapped around her forearms and calves.

"We've got a Kumo forehead protector," Anko informed after a quick circuit around the suspended woman. "Hey. If she _is_ a jinchuriki, wasn't this too easy?"

Naruto looked at Yugao, and caught Hana and the Triplets finally emerging from the treeline, "I wouldn't call it easy exactly. Yugao got it pretty bad, and the only reason we won was because I've been preparing to fight one specifically."

"Yeah, but still. They're supposed to be destroyers of armies."

"Four Post Chakra Binding!" the clones yelled as they clapped their hands back together. The chains pulled out of the corners and wrapped themselves around the still conscious woman. Watching the chains tighten around her independently of each other reminded him of constricting snakes. When the woman was completely bound, the barrier fell, but even though the actual barrier was down, the clones remained with their clapped hands still in place to keep the chains in existence.

"Anything to say now that we can hear you Darlin'?" Naruto asked when he walked a little closer. He was glad they'd decided to forgo their forehead protectors while they were on the island, it just didn't make sense if they were trying to be covert. The Kumo kunoichi remained tight lipped. "Are you a jinchuriki?" A sigh slipped out of his mouth when she didn't say anything. "Listen, I'm going to put some temporary seals on you, so if you're holding a Biju, shit could get real if the seals interact poorly. At worst, both of you would die, at best you would be crippled for life."

"Yugito Nii of Kumo," she said before rattling off a registration number that he didn't bother remembering. He really wished he'd pestered Jiraiya for a list of jinchuriki now.

"Anko?" Generally the jinchuriki of the villages were open secrets. How much each let out about the identity varied widely, but it was important to let the other powers know that they still had their weapons.

"Sounds familiar, not sure," Anko responded. He turned his head toward Yugao, if anyone else would know, it would probably be her, but she was currently asleep, or unconscious, or something while Hana healed her burns.

Naruto sighed and removed his blind fold. Two blue eyes gazed down at the bound kunoichi. Chakra pumped into his left eye, and the eye swirled and changed. In the place of his blue eye, there was a Mangekyo Sharingan in the shape of curved, four pointed shuriken—almost like a fuma shuriken. He used it to cast a genjutsu off the top of his head, _Genjutsu: Sensory Deprivation._ All of Yugito's senses, except for touch, were cut off for the moment. Sharingans really were just like cheating. By the way she started jerking around, it seemed to have worked.

"Well, what the fuck do we do now?" Naruto wondered aloud.

* * *

A/N the Latter: What are they going to do with Yugito? Why was Yugito on the island? What's with the Uzumaki library and time-space crystal? Why did Sasori just give him the instructions for making human puppets? Did Itachi kill Orochimaru?

Well, things are starting to shape up in the macro-plot.

If I had to do this over again, I would've picked someone who isn't Anko or toned her down, because every time they have a moment together, it becomes couched in sexuality—which can get a little tiresome. This isn't going to change for a while, not until Anko realizes she doesn't need that crutch when she's alone with Naruto. Their relationship is starting to balance out a bit at least, Anko is starting to move from focusing on Naruto in the relationship and letting some of her needs/wants be known. Also, what Anko said is true, she doesn't care if Naruto is banging a girl or a guy, but she wants some variety and they haven't had a MMF threesome. Give and take is something that is necessary in any relationship, and I felt like we just had to see Anko cash in on some of her goodwill here. Naruto isn't worried about "turning gay" here, for the record, just that if he isn't into it, it will make a crappy experience for everyone. For the curious, Anko's admitted fetish is called scopophilia.

Naruto's deliberate cheesiness is probably one of the things that are the most fun to write, and he's starting to progress into non sequitor territory.


	11. Division

Disclaimer: Still don't own things.

A/N: This was a little later than usual due to a lot of things you probably don't care about. Because of that I decided to add a little length, over 50%.

NarutoxAnko lemon near the beginning here. Was annoying to write, and one of the aforementioned reasons.

Lots of talking, drama, and relationship stuff in here. Really just a prelude to delicious things next chapter.

Thanks for all the follows, favorites, and reviews.

Enjoy.

* * *

Naruto sat at a work table in the back of their temporary home. Their prisoner hadn't said anything and spent the night sealed under an impromptu lean-to. They'd rotated guard shifts with at least one clone at all times. Due to the apparent acute misanthropy of the kunoichi, and Kurama's continued silence, he had to design a diagnostic seal, because he was ninety percent certain that the prisoner was a jinchuriki. Hopefully, the seal would be able to give him some other information in addition to whether or not she contained a Biju.

Anko sat on the edge of his desk, cleaning under her fingernail with the sharp end of a dango skewer. He briefly wondered how much dango she'd sealed up before they left and what she'd had to pay the stand owner to have it ready.

"You ever think of leaving?" Anko asked in a deceptively casual manner.

Naruto's hands only stopped moving for a moment before he resumed his work and answered, "Less now than before."

"Why?"

"You, and to a lesser extent Tsunade, Guren, Kurenai, and Karin."

"You still think of it though?"

"Mhmm," he paused to collect his thoughts. "Before, it was resentment directed at pretty much everyone, the Third, the councils, the advisers, nearly all the civilians, and about half of the ninja population. Now that Sasori helped us drop the dime on the powers that be, I suppose it's become a relationship of convenience," Naruto sighed. "There aren't really any upsides to leaving at this point, because I could probably convince Tsunade to permanently assign me here. I don't know. I'd like to reestablish my village, but realistically, I'm probably not suited to lead."

"Don't you mean constantly dealing with people seems like too much work?" Anko chuckled. "Besides, aren't you putting the cart before the horse? It would take an enormous amount of work to get this village in working condition again."

"Anyway, I can't see a real future for me inside the village. There'll be problems for me there until the older generation is gone, and it just doesn't seem worth it, even if I'm pretty much avoiding them as of now." He paused in his work and looked up to her, "Why the curiosity, Love?"

"Our time here has been nice," a little smile played across her face, but disappeared as soon as she realized it was there. "We see the others and have things to do, but it's mostly just been us hanging around in the vault, training, fucking, or spending time together. Neither of us have to deal with our reputations, we can just be, and it's been nice."

A clone appeared to the side of her, picked her up, and tossed her toward Naruto as he pushed his chair back from the desk. Anko's elbow thudded into Naruto's shoulder as she landed side saddle in his lap. "It has been nice," he confirmed, snaking an arm around her waist.

"Don't treat me like a sack of rice, damn it," Anko's anger faded while Naruto's grin persisted. She sighed, "Whatever." To his amusement, despite her annoyance, she leaned into his chest. "I don't know if it's just 'cause of contrast though, or if I could really take it outside the system."

"Sounds like our reasons for leaving and staying are the same, Love. I honestly don't know what to do about it, so how about we just enjoy this as much as we can and go from there?"

"Tch, you act like we weren't already doing that." She leaned over and let her teeth nip at his earlobe, "So, what are you planning on doing with the prisoner?"

"Well, if she is a jinchuriki, she's either the Nibi or the Hachibi, If she's not, she's got a pretty fancy power."

Anko spun around in his lap, leaving her sitting on his knees and her legs to either side of him, "Are you going to make her into a puppet?" A few days after they'd arrived in Uzushio, Naruto told Anko the latest information he'd gotten from Sasori. She hadn't been against it; in fact, she wanted him to make Orochimaru's carcass into one, and then have him teach her how to use puppets. He figured it would probably be liberating being the literal puppeteer to a man who was a figurative one and ruined your life.

"Not if she's a jinchuriki." Her lips attached themselves to his neck and ear at random. "I'll probably try to turn her." His belt clinked as she unbuckled it and unzipped his pants. She fished him out of his boxer briefs and began to pump.

"What else?"

"It might take us out of our depth if she's a jinchuriki."

Naruto groaned as Anko increased her pace and asked, "Anything else we should consider?"

"She might not have been alone, she might have been trying to contact Kiri, it might be coincidence, and that's all I can think of," he listed quickly, between ragged breaths.

"Not a bad assessment, your concentration is getting better," she commended while her thumb massaged his head and smeared around the bubbling precum. "How about a reward?" One hand settled on his shoulder, and she stood up slightly. The hand left on his dick guided his tip to her entrance. A keening moan ripped from her throat as she slammed herself down. "God, every time. It's like your cock is built for my cunt." Naruto could only grunt while he temporarily lost himself in the hot, strangling pleasure inside of her.

Anko finally started to move after a few deep breaths. The clone that appeared behind Anko yanked her shirt up over her head and disappeared. He sent a small mental thanks toward the fact that they wore casual clothes in the morning, getting through that metal mesh armor was terrible. His tongue lashed repeatedly across a perky, hardened nipple; the other was sandwiched, being tweaked, between his fingertips.

Her hand palmed the back of his head and pulled his face against her breast. "Mmm, suck my fuckin' tits," she demanded breathlessly. His free hand found its way to where they were connected to gently rub circles into her engorged clit. Anko's strokes became shorter and more frantic, and all that could be heard inside the cabin for the next minutes was a chorus of grunts and moans.

A clone appeared next to his desk and hurriedly cleaned it off as Naruto stood. She locked her legs behind his back. Her insides roiled and clamped down on him, but he managed to break her grip and lay her on the desk, nearly stumbling as his pants bunched around his ankles.

"But I'm almost there," Anko whined after he pulled out of her.

"Don't worry Ko-chan," he pulled her legs over his shoulders and thrust back into her shallowly, "this'll be fun too." Naruto ground into her g-spot as slowly as he could, savoring each twitch and agonizing moan as she shifted her hips toward him in an attempt to increase his pace and depth. "All you have to do is say please." She shook her head, and he smirked, she was still being stubborn. Behind his smirk, he desperately held onto his self control. All he wanted to do was bury himself inside her, but having her will broken got the strong kunoichi off like almost nothing else.

Only a minute passed before she started begging for release, "Please give it to me," she whimpered. "Fuck me like a whore, obliterate my pussy with your dick. Please," Anko urged piteously.

"Ah, you know I can't resist when you beg so cutely." A loud smack sounded as Naruto immediately buried himself on the next thrust. He was transfixed, even as he pounded into her at a blistering speed, by the combined sight of her jiggling breasts and the rapturous expression on her face.

"I'm so close. Fill me up, push me over the edge." He didn't bother responding. After he stopped holding back, it was only a few minutes before he pushed in as deeply as he could. His dick pulsated, painting her constricting, undulating tunnel in his fluids. With a scream and body spasms, Anko covered his groin in her juices.

After enjoying the residual shockwaves of pleasure, Naruto extricated himself and dropped into his chair with a creak. "Well, that was fun," he commented as he was treated to a first row view of his cum leaking out of Anko's still twitching pussy. "I think we might have loosened up my chair though." Shifting his weight around experimentally, he found that the chair squeaked in quite a few directions. "I really should have brought some carpenter's glue and screws. Nails just don't do it." She giggled, dare he say, girlishly. "It's a shame you always wear a trench coat, your ass looks amazing even from here," he observed absently.

"I don't want to hear that from the guy who runs around with ninety-eight percent of his body covered on any normal day," she responded while sitting up and shifting the bunched up skirt around her waist down. "You gonna put that away, or would you like me to clean it up for you?" she asked, licking her lips.

"I'd love to," Naruto assured, as he stood to peel off his soaked underwear and partially saturated shirt, "but I believe we've got the sit down on what to do with the prisoner soon."

"Then go put some clothes on before I'm forced to jump you."

He raised an eyebrow, "I don't think I want to hear that from someone with their tits out and no underwear on under their skirt."

"Hah, hah, hah," she shot back sarcastically as he walked into the bedroom.

Ten minutes, and a quick water jutsu and soaping, later, Naruto walked back in the living area, clad in only his underwear, to grab his pants. Anko sat on the edge of his desk with her legs crossed and back in her casual clothes, but sitting in three other chairs, were Mei Terumi, Haku, and Yugao. He didn't pause in the trek to his pants, even though he could feel their eyes on him, and he tried not to scowl at the tongue sticking out of Anko's mouth. Only after his pants were successfully buckled, did he acknowledge the presence of the others in the room.

"Anko, Love, I don't suppose you'd know where the scroll with my clothes in it went?" he asked evenly. _Did she really go to all the work of sneaking them in here, and arranging it beforehand to make me do this?_ After rinsing himself off, the only article of clothing he'd found in their bedroom was a pair of underwear.

"Hmm, I'm not sure. Let me go check." She bounded into the bedroom with a spring in her step and a grin on her face.

"Ladies, gentleman," he nodded toward them. His chair creaked as he sat down. "I wasn't expecting you today Mei-chan."

"I can see that," she quipped. "What could have held your interest enough for you lose track of time?" she wondered with a lascivious smirk.

"Well, as I'm sure Hana can smell," the Inuzuka blushed at that, "about fifteen minutes ago, Anko was begging me to 'obliterate her pussy' on my desk. In fact, I'd bet she's still got some of my cum dripping out of her." He took some pleasure in the fact that they all became some degree of embarrassed and uncomfortable. "Any other questions?"

"The scars," Mei responded.

Even though he was annoyed, a smile briefly occupied his face, "I did something stupid." A turtleneck and mask flew across the room and wrapped around his face. After taking the out and pulling the clothing on, he asked, "So, what did you need that you came unannounced?"

"I let Haku know early this morning. I assume the message was intercepted somewhere," she guessed, with a pointed look at Anko. "From everything we know, the first and definitive battle of our war will happen in about two weeks."

"Why are you telling me this?"

"Yagura will meet us with his most trusted guards," she began. "We'll need help to take him down."

"Why are you fighting like samurai in the first place?"

"He's essentially untouchable otherwise. Additionally, if we destroy him in front of his supporters, we'll end this war that much more quickly," she explained.

"You know, people always say something similar to that, but there's a decent chance they'll try even harder to murder you. I mean you can't run a military force solely on terror. There's an upper echelon that are going to be pissed at the very least, yeah?"

"The majority just don't want to be killed by Yagura. I'm confident once we kill him, the battle will end in our favor," Mei argued.

"Yeah, but you can't really advance in the 'Bloody Mist' without at least partially agreeing with Yagura's stance right?" She nodded. "So, all the cannon fodder, that you're going to be murdering straight away, will be on your side once you mow through them to the ones who want to keep their position?"

"What do you have in mind then?" she asked a little too sweetly.

"I don't know," Naruto rubbed his chin. "We could wait until he's in a strategy meeting and then break the seal that holds the Sanbi. You'd lose infrastructure instead of people."

"And you could seal it?"

He shrugged, "I'd have to look into it, but it could be drawn away from the village I assume." His eyes widened slightly in realization, "Not to mention my way nets you more points with the population—saving them from a Biju and all—and discredits Yagura. The only downside is that it'll put jinchurikis in a poor light." After a pause, "Oh, and you'll obviously be founding your tenure on a lie, but plenty of people have done that."

"It will be better than continuing to live under Yagura."

"Give me two days, and remember that one doesn't become a cackling butcher overnight; everyone is constantly justifying their own actions as the correct ones."

"Two days," she confirmed as she stood and walked out the door. The other two followed her as he heard her call for Ao to follow.

"Anko, we need to talk."

"What? I can't show you off?" she began preemptively. "Is it the scars? I think they make you look even sexier."

"I'm proud of them and like them actually, but they're personal." He ran a hand through his shaggy hair, "You practically forced me to divulge a very personal, traumatic experience to people that are acquaintances at best."

"It didn't look like they minded."

"That's not the point, and I thought you would know better than to force me into a position of weakness in front of a probable, future Kage. It doesn't matter if she cared or not." Naruto sighed while she fidgeted. "You could have asked me to parade around in my underwear if you wanted me to. I would have probably said yes, but you took away my choice to decide whether or not to do it. It's not alright."

"I'm sorry," she blurted.

"I'm not mad, just a little annoyed and disappointed. I don't- I'm not sure how to express this exactly, but I imagine it's something similar to how you act when we're alone. These scars are a testament to us, and other people don't need to know about them. Do you understand what I'm trying to say?" _Fuck, articulating emotions is too difficult. Now I sound like an overreaching tool._

"Yes." Her head was tilted toward the floor like a scolded child. He had to remind himself that she had nearly as little experience in long term relationships as he did thanks to a certain snake royally screwing her up.

"Come on, don't go acting like a schoolgirl on me now Anko-chan." He wrapped his arms around her to pull her into a hug. "This wasn't the first and it won't be the last mistake either of us makes, but we have to get things out in the open or they'll fester."

"I wasn't thinking, I'm sorry," Anko assured him with more confidence.

"I know, but we should probably get going and decide on what we're doing with that prisoner."

"Right." As she left to get battle ready, a shadow clone appeared and sat down to finish the diagnostic seal.

He sighed, _What the hell am I doing out here. It seems like all I do anymore is manage people._ Earlier he'd agreed it was nice, but it didn't feel like he was getting much done. The few clones that he could send to the Uzumaki vault and sealing structure were having a tough time of it, and he couldn't brute force it due to chakra concerns and jumbling up anything he could make heads or tails of. Sure, spending a lot of time with Anko was nice, but the lack of nonsexual action really wound her tight; probably one of the reasons she'd forced him around in front of the spectators earlier. It just felt like he should be doing something more, or that there was a shoe somewhere getting ready to drop.

Anko exited the bedroom dressed in her usual gear. Naruto pulled her into a quick kiss, and let his forehead lay against hers after they broke apart. "Sorry, I feel like shit all of a sudden and being close to you always makes me feel better," he admitted.

"Getting corny again already huh? You're too nice for your own good, but that's one of the things I love about you," she added the last part quietly with some uncertainty.

A grin stretched across his face, "Thanks, Love. I don't want to act like I'm on a teen drama, but it does the heart good to hear you be explicit about it."

"It's not just 'cause of before. I mean, I'm not trying to buy you back or anything."

"I know."

* * *

Naruto crouched in front of an unrolled scroll on the ground a few hours later. Their prisoner, Yugito, was still sealed under the lean-to with the addition of a paper tag over her sternum and forehead.

"And we've got ourselves a fire natured jinchuriki," Naruto announced as the lines on the paper rearranged themselves. "The Nibi by these chakra levels." He pinched the bridge of his nose, "Well, shit just got complicated." The seals on a stake in the ground lit up at Naruto's touch. "Alright, she can't hear us, though we should probably move this meeting elsewhere in case she can read lips." Clones appeared to keep an eye on the jinchuriki while the Konoha group deliberated out of view.

"This is an international incident waiting to happen," Yugao began. He couldn't see any indication that she was favoring her injured side, Hana must really excel at medical ninjutsu.

"I'd say this is already one. In retrospect, we should've kept Anko and Hana out of her sight. They're noticeable as Konoha-nin even if we aren't wearing forehead protectors," Naruto suggested ruefully. "Shikamaru, it seems like you should have caught that." The pineapple haired boy just shrugged. Nara laziness sure detracted from their value in the field. Sadly, it would probably take a death to make Shikamaru take things more seriously. "Anyway, she can substantiate a Konoha operation that's technically outside of our borders."

"And making her disappear is dangerous, because we have no idea what her mission is or was," Yugao continued.

"That isn't even close to the worst of it. We're looking at a country-level political destabilization from the loss of a jinchuriki. This could be the catalyst for war." Seemingly, everyone came to the same conclusion during the silence. "We have to send her back somehow." Naruto sighed, and lamented that he seemed to be doing that a lot lately. "Ideas?"  
"Can you give her the old evil eye?" Anko wondered.

"Genjutsu worked on her once, so that would seem to indicate she can't break them with the aid of her Biju. So, maybe."

"A seal?" Hana suggested.

"Maybe, I'm kind of strapped figuring out seals at the moment."

"We could talk with her," Shikamaru put forward reasonably.

"That pretty much has to happen no matter what course we choose." Naruto rubbed at his face. "Yugao? How are you doing by the way?"

"Combat capable, if not completely healed, but I have nothing to add at the moment."

"Alright, be on the look out for any partners she may have had," Naruto ordered. "I'll be holed up with a project for our friends from Kiri and trying to figure out what we're going to be doing with our prisoner for the next few days."

He left the circle of ninja, and walked back in front of the lean-to to pull up the sealed stake. With a yank, he stood Yugito up and walked her back to his cabin. She dropped into a chair, and he pulled another up a few feet away from her.

"Can we just skip to the good bits?" he asked. Yugito maintained her silence. "If you really want to play hardball, I can make a seal that will tear Nibi out of you. That'll kill you, just so you know." Silence. Naruto stood back up and lifted his shirt. A quick chakra channeling made his seal light up, "Know what this is?"

"No."

"I've got the Kyuubi in me, and I'd rather not treat a fellow container unfairly."

"A jinchuriki with a Sharingan?"

"Not to mention a seal master," he added. "I don't suppose I can convince you to just forget that we're hanging around out here?"

"No."

"You could always join up with me. To be honest, I was treated incredibly poorly in my village until I had some measure of power and common sense. Like being constantly sabotaged, overcharged, and occasionally hunted for sport. Of course, I don't know what Kumo is like, but I would treat you like a person instead of a thing or a weapon." He sighed wistfully. "I'm not going to do anything to you. I'm going to knock you out and drop you inside the borders of lightning. Anything to say before your nap?"

Her answer was longer in coming and softer, but it was still, "No."

"As you wish." His shifted eye from blue to black and red, and he commanded, "Sleep." Yugito's chin smacked against her chest as his eye reverted to its normal color. He slapped a new sealing tag on her forehead and channeled chakra through it.

"We're not really doing that are we?" Anko asked from the doorway.

"No. Strip her and lay her out on my work table." Anko slipped an arm under the unconscious kunoichi's shoulder and hefted her up. "I have to run to the vault, but I need a look at her seal first." She laid the jinchuriki out on the table, but before she could get to the stripping, Naruto amended, "Forget the stripping, just think of a good place to put a seal somewhere it won't be seen on her body while I'm gone." He yanked off her shirt, and gloved his hand in chakra. First, he ran over her abdomen and, finding nothing, then each shoulder.

"What kind of seal?" Anko asked a little hesitantly.

"Memory." He paused in his inspection to look over at her, "What did you think I'd be giving her, a slave seal or something?"

"Well, I mean, you could. She'd be an amazing asset," she reasoned.

"Excluding any issues of morality, I'm not sure how good the Nibi is at breaking things with its chakra," he explained as he resumed his search for her seal. "There we are." He rolled her over so she was lying prone. The symbol for iron sat between her shoulder blades. His senses extended through his hand a bit more, poking at and testing aspects of the seal. "Huh. This seems to be relatively weak as far as containing seals go."

"I'll hold down the fort Ruto," Anko assured with a quick kiss. "Go find what you need to find."

* * *

Naruto walked back in three hours later with a look of determination across his face.

Anko discarded the skewer she was fiddling with to ask, "How we doin'? Did you find something useful?"

"Yep," he paused momentarily. "Throw her shirt on and pick her up, we should do this somewhere remote."

Twenty minutes later they stood in a clearing occupied by his clones and multiple unrolled scrolls. Memories filtered in, and he knew no one else would come no matter how crazy it started sounding.

"What are you really going to do with her?"

"I may be considering trying to extract the Nibi without killing her."

"And we're going to do what with a manifested Biju?" Anko seemed to be restraining herself from raising her voice.

"Talk to it, maybe seal it into something."

"What about all that crap about political destabilization?" she demanded, throwing up her arms.

"Well, when she'll still be alive to be dropped off, and maybe she'll even retain some of her Biju's power. Also, I can probably seal it back into her if things don't go our way." A clone working within the ring of sealing scrolls unsealed a puppet shaped like a person.

"Naruto, this is a terrible idea! You've never done this before!" she practically screamed, her face reddening quickly as she became more and more incensed.

Naruto stood up from checking the sealing array, "Just trust me, okay?" he asked with all the gravity he could muster. "I don't have to tell you to run if something happens do I?" Her protests were cut short by a gentle kiss to the forehead, "As a precaution, remember that I love you." Another kiss interrupted her response, but this time it was on her lips. "For luck," he explained with a grin. _Score! I always wanted to be super dramatic like that, good job myself_, Naruto thought as he turned back to the sealing grounds.

The unrolled scrolls made several concentric rings around a prone Yugito. Naruto stopped outside of the first ring where the puppet was laid out. Arrays already connected the lifeless husk to the sealing rings, and it appeared that the last working clone had finally finished. Only one clone was left inside the first ring, while others were stationed around the outside of the sealing area on the off chance something unforeseen happened.

He nodded to the interior clone, "Do it." It crouched down to touch the edge of a square of paper lying under the unconscious kunoichi. The ink quickly became incandescent, the glow spread through the rings in a ripple centered directly around the jinchuriki. A translucent white dome snapped into place over the innermost ring. Almost simultaneously, he could feel the outermost ring throw up its own energy dome. As soon as his clone had pumped in the chakra, it had begun to carefully move through two-hundred and seven hand seals.

The seal on Yugito's back blazed into luminescence as soon as the clone touched a fingertip to the edge of it. Slowly, a roiling, tumultuous, flaming ball of energy floated up from her back. As soon as the clone saw what was happening, it stomped on a seal at the edge of the paper square under their prisoner. Green chakra bubbled up from the sealing pad to surround Yugito, signaling the secondary function had begun without a hitch. Ripples moved through the concentrated energy of the ball, and it slowly became more amorphous and less dense.

Outside the inner dome, Naruto was confused. It wouldn't be obvious to Anko, but the dome had nothing to do with blocking energy signatures. The problem was that he could barely sense any of the chakra unique to the Biju coming off the odd sphere. He checked the small rectangle of paper in his hand; Yugito appeared to still be breathing, and her heart was still beating. _This wasn't what I expected at all. Generally not good. Maybe I should have listened to Anko._

His decision was made for him, as the amorphous mass shifted and solidified, and, just as quickly, disappeared in a blur. Memories drifted into his head as his clone turned into nothing more than a little smoke. Something that blurred before his eyes slammed into the dome of of energy directly in front of Naruto. A yowling cat landed on the ground from the force of rebounding off the shield. The odd thing about the cat was that it had two tails and seemed to be made of blue flames and black markings that weren't dissimilar from what he'd seen on Shukaku.

_A house cat sized Nibi? What the hell is going on?_ "Matatabi-san I presume?" Naruto asked as he dropped into a crouch.

"What have you done with my power, boy?" the apparent Biju hissed.

"Truthfully? No idea," he informed with a shrug. "Maybe if you explain the mechanisms of your power, I could tell you. It also would have helped if you didn't kill my clone." He made sure to rigorously keep track of the time, if he couldn't steal the Biju's chakra, he probably only had about an hour before the array exhausted his chakra tags.

The cat shaped mass hopped around for a few moments before settling down on its haunches. "We take in Nature chakra. It is that which becomes our power." That was interesting. No wonder the Biju never ran out of energy. Nature chakra existed everywhere, and if they could constantly take it in and purify it...

"If that's true, why does it matter? Shouldn't you be able to refill your reserves out here?" Nibi resorted to growling as a response. During the angry posturing, the medical chakra coating the form of Yugito fell away. The Biju hissed and Naruto made a circling motion in the air with his hand. A poof of smoke engulfed the Kumo kunoichi, and, as the smoke cleared, the center of the sealing array was empty.

"How did you do this, boy?!" the angry cat demanded after whipping back around from where it'd tried to pounce on the unconscious prisoner.

"Accidentally, apparently. Though now that I think back to the scroll, maybe this was what was supposed to happen." The vault was an amazing resource, but the language that the information was written in occasionally left something to be desired. Sometimes the syntax would be abnormal, the diction flowery, or the text would refer to something that was completely outside of his knowledge base. Well, it seemed this result suited him just fine. "So, am I to presume that I've somehow extracted the barest traces of your chakra combined with your consciousness?"

"Why have you done this?"

"I have an offer. Ten years of service. Reevaluation of our contract after two, five, and seven years. When it's over I release all of my control, and you can go on your own way," he explained.

"I am already out, why would I agree to that?"

"By your own admission you have no power. If you'd rather, I could just seal you up in a bedpan." Naruto sighed, threats were categorically ineffective against chakra monsters, but it needed to be said. "Kumo would keep you sealed into a long line of containers. This way, you get to have your own body and do your own thing, you just have to help me out." He thought it was a pretty good offer. His estimation of the age of Yugito was mid-twenties, which meant Nibi had, more than likely, already been sealed in her for at least double the length of the proposed contract.

"This does not seem like an accident, boy."

"Actually, you're doing far better than you should be. This dome was designed to extract your chakra and use it as reinforcement, but since you apparently have so little, I haven't gone to the trouble of activating that part."

"So, you planned on stealing all my chakra before 'taming' me. I do not see how you are any different than my previous jinchurikis."

"I thought treating you like a sentient being and offering you the chance to touch the world again, in a limited capacity, before setting you free was a pretty good start," Naruto shot back. Why did all the Biju he met have to be so intractable and arrogant? Even Kurama was, in his own way. "I don't know how this isn't a good idea for you. If I haven't done my homework, you could just break out of the seals binding you into this puppet. If I have, the special contracting seal will essentially make us partners."

"Surely you can understand my reticence. Whether or not you are being truthful with your intentions, you have essentially forced my hand. That makes you seem untrustworthy indeed."

"Look at it this way; if I'm doing this kind of thing all the time, how long do you think it'll be before I screw up fatally? So, even if I'm lying, it's not like you'll be stuck with me any longer than you would be trapped in Yugito," he argued. "Plus, you'll get your own body the entire time, and you'll get to make any decisions not regarding an order from me on your own."

"What must I do to complete the contract?" The Biju managed to accept his offer without losing any of the anger or annoyance in its voice. Finally, he really hadn't left Nibi many options, plus it really was a decent deal.

"Don't resist," Naruto responded as he sped through sixty-one hand seals. Finishing with Serpent, he held it and intoned, "Carsultyal Sealing: Dark Sun Binding." Tendrils of chakra snapped out from various tenketsu all over his body and dove down through the ground to strike up at the back of the human shaped puppet. A twisted cord of tendrils shot up through the chest of the puppet and altered its course wildly toward the barrier. The end of the cord untwisted, individual tendrils reaching out after it passed through the inner dome. Nibi yowled uselessly as the chakra cordage tightened around various points on its body.

Glittering, slowly dissolving shards filled the inner sealing area when the binding jutsu hauled the Biju bodily through the barrier dome. The cord flew over the puppet with a whip crack as if it was overcompensating for the resistance of breaking the barrier—unfortunately, the quick changes in momentum did nothing to reduce the howling of the Nibi. Rapidly, the chakra rope hauled back toward the puppet, only slowing down as the cat came into contact with the body. With a final yank, the Biju was deposited inside the chest of the puppet. A stylized black sun gradually materialized on the sternum of the container, and Naruto's chakra tendrils finally broke away as chakra shimmered over Nibi's temporary home.

Naruto staggered as his hands let go of the Serpent seal. He'd expended way more chakra than he'd wanted. Apparently it was a good thing that he'd only extracted the consciousness, he had no idea how much energy it would have taken to seal up an uncrippled Nibi. Though, he supposed, he would have been bolstered by its chakra in that event.

The chakra around the puppet coalesced, and the Nibi, in its new form, stood. Surprisingly, though Naruto didn't know what he'd expected, the body the Biju now inhabited was female. She stood a few inches over five feet, striking red hair flowed down her back to her waist, and pert, handful sized breasts were about the only traces of fat he could find on the toned kunoichi body. Her eyes opened, and he was struck by the mismatch; one was jade green and the other a clear crystal blue. Pale skin complimented her vibrant hair and eyes to an impressive degree.

"You look quite beautiful Matatabi-san," he complimented with a nod of his head. "If you wouldn't mind, please use the henge seals I've incorporated into your body's base to form clothes, as I do not want to have to fight off ravening packs of people ensorcelled by your charms."

"I felt that," she commented as she tilted her head quizzically, "Naruto-san." A typical ANBU uniform snapped into place around her. The lack of smoke was interesting.

"I hope it wasn't too unpleasant, but I'm afraid I must set down some ground rules. You must always abide by the spirit of the commands I give you, please do not try to avoid them via semantics. Do not harm anyone from Konoha or those who are unaggressive. The caveat to that rule is that you may harm them if they attempt or intend to harm those close to me, those I ask you to protect, or myself." Naruto ran through all the orders he could think of that would stop a Biju from stabbing him in the back. Multitudes of fail safes later he said, "I was being truthful. You may live your life as you wish, as long as you abide by those rules. Questions?"

"What will you do with my former container?"

"Drop her off in Lightning as I said I would. If she still contains your power, I doubt she'll come out of it too poorly." After he ran through six hand seals and stomped the ground, the sealing array deactivated.

"What if she cannot regenerate it?"

"She seems a capable kunoichi. She'll only suffer if she was too reliant on your power," Matatabi frowned at that, but didn't comment further. "What is it?"

"I fear she won't be as well received as you believe."

"What is your sugge-" Naruto's question was cut off by a tan blur slamming into him.

"Fucking idiot!" Anko chastised as she held onto him.

"Hey Anko-chan, everything went swimmingly," he promised. "Please meet Matatabi-san."

"Hello Anko-san. He mentioned offhandedly that several things did not go according to plan," Nibi informed, completely deadpan.

_You bitch!_ "Everything was within my error allowance, Love," he tried to assure.

Matatabi cut in quickly with a smirk, "That was not my impression."

"Quiet. I don't care," Anko said. Naruto's narrowed eyes widened and the hard line of his lips turned into a smile.

"Anyway, what was your suggestion on what to do with Yugito?"

"Turn her."

"How? She didn't seem the type to roll over."

"I could talk to her," the Biju suggested somewhat lamely.

"If she accepts the same contract seal as you, then very well. Pull the paper tag off her forehead and she'll wake up." Matatabi bowed her head and walked over to the unconscious kunoichi laying at the edge of the clearing.

"Was that a good idea?" Anko wondered.

He shrugged. "I doubt very much she'll be able to turn her, unless they have an extremely close relationship."

"Why do this?"

"So Kurama doesn't make my life more difficult than it already is, Ko-chan." They watched as a dazed Yugito tried to move but was limited to only her head and neck. Their conversation quickly turned as animated as it could with one party unable to use their limbs.

Naruto only half focused on what was going on with the Biju and its former container, the other half of his attention was devoted to the feeling of being in contact with Anko. They cuddled quite often out of sight of others, but there was just something about the warmth, literal and figurative, from someone who cared about you that he couldn't get enough of.

Five minutes later, Matatabi replaced the chakra tag on Yugito's forehead and walked back to Anko and Naruto. "I am afraid I could not convince her," she said as she walked up to the pair.

"Very well. Please guard me, I'm not sure how long this is going to take." Naruto knelt over the unconscious prisoner, with the two women flanking him. He whispered, "Kotoamatsukami," as his Sharingan morphed into the Mangekyo. Immediately, he felt himself pulled down into the mind of Yugito. It was his most powerful genjutsu, even able to alter recent memories, perceptions, and feelings. The only problem was it was so taxing to his eye, that he could only use it every few weeks.

A hand clamping on his shoulder brought him out of the haze inside his target's head. His eye burned as he rubbed them vigorously and powered down his evil eye.

"We have problems," came Anko's voice.

Naruto's bones creaked and popped as he stood, "How long?"

"Couple hours."

"What are we looking at?" he asked while he stretched.

"Naruto-kun," Haku cut in. "Yagura's forces have begun to move, the battle will be joined in six hours, approximately dawn."

He sighed as a clone poofed into existence. It picked up Yugito and sprinted off to the northwest. "We leave in a half hour; Anko, Haku please inform everyone, Tabi-san, you're with me." At least he'd finished changing Yugito's memories before they'd pulled him back.

* * *

Slightly over five hours later their powered skiff ran up on the bank. Naruto had thought ahead, and included a chakra powered skiff in his sealed equipment; it'd let them traverse the swamps without everyone having to expend a ton of energy water walking. He moved out of the cross legged position he'd been occupying in the bottom of the skiff to leap ashore. Once everyone was on shore, the clone who'd been powering the motor and driving disappeared in a poof of smoke. A scroll on his harness unrolled to touch the edge of the skiff at the direction of his chakra. It wound back quickly as soon as the vessel was lost in smoke.

"How's everyone doing?" Naruto asked.

"Shouldn't we be asking you that?" Anko wondered worriedly.

"I'm fine." He was, mostly. Between the chakra his seal stole from Kurama, his Uzumaki heritage, and the few chakra seals he had left, he was currently around eighty percent. However, that didn't mean his coils liked him running so much chakra through them—chakra burns were definitely in his near future. "Haku, where are we going?"

"This way," uttered a gruff voice from the edge of the trees.

"Zabuza-sama," Haku muttered.

"We need to hurry," Zabuza growled.

* * *

Twenty minutes later, the group stopped on the crest of a hill overlooking a mist filled clearing. The Mizukage stood near the edge with her entourage. He recognized Ao, and there was a younger male wielding an odd looking sword hammer thing.

"Naruto-san, it's good that you've made it here so quickly," Mei greeted. "Yagura's forces should be arriving shortly, do you have anything that can help us?"

"A thing or two," he confirmed. The clone that appeared next to him hopped and ran down to stand on the rebel's side of the clearing. It stood perfectly still as it waited. "I'd suggest you wait for the army to mass and my clone to do its thing before you put any of your men in front of it."

"What about Yagura?"

"I'll need help to tie him and his up while I try to work my magic." He turned to his group, "Anko-chan, Tabi-chan, Yugao-san, you're with me. Hana-san, Shikamaru, you're with the medics."

"They are approaching, Mizukage-sama," Ao informed the group.

"Positions!" she yelled. "Do not move in front of our man on the field until he acts!" Mei ordered.

"Guard me," Naruto said as he sat cross legged on the ground. He channeled chakra into a seal on his chest, and reached out into the air, feeling the energy flowing around him. The only usable thing that had come out of the vault so far had been sealing. However, the breadth of that sealing knowledge was vast. In fact, he'd discovered something he was fairly certain no one left alive knew: the Uzumakis had created seals that could draw in, and alter, Nature chakra.

"They're here," Ao confirmed. Naruto stood, and was aghast at the thousands of ninja streaming into the open area.

"Damn." The rebel forces lined up behind his clone and waited for the milling mass of enemies to form up.

Yagura rose on the pillar of water behind his troops, and his voice rang out over the battlefield, "Surrender now and you shall live."

The rest of his speech was cut off as Naruto's clone screamed. Chakra exploded from his throat, super-compressing the air in front of him and forcing it forward. Naruto watched from the hill as the parabolic line extended, flattening grass. A _thoom_ washed over them as the blast wave broke the sound barrier. His clone popped as the wave scythed the troops down like grain; the memories filtering in were of eyes liquifying and men falling to their knees clutching their bloodied ears. Some simply fell over as their brains rattled too violently in their skulls. Soon, the ones that survived would be coughing blood, or writhing in pain as acids from their ruptured stomachs and intestines began to leak into their insides.

Rebels surged forward as soon as they saw the enemy ninja fall. It was a fairly terrifying technique, one that required an enormous amount of chakra to properly execute. The key was the fact that it targeted things that were extremely hard to reinforce with chakra; waves conducted straight through hardened bone and muscle to disrupt fluid and air filled areas of the body. After passing each line, the wave weakened, but he'd better than leveled the playing field for the rebels.

The Mizukage sprinted off with Ao, Zabuza, and Haku, aiming to circumvent the majority of the battlefield to reach Yagura and his party. Naruto signaled to his team, and they tagged along behind. Suddenly, nearly halfway across the clearing, a streaking blue body impacted between the two groups. A tall, blue-skinned Kiri ninja stood in a small crater between them. An enormous, bandage wrapped sword was in his right hand, and his pointed teeth were exposed in a malicious grin.

"Oh, this is going to be fun," he cackled madly.

* * *

A/N: Tune in next chapter for the War in the Mist! Learn some more about Matatabi! Exclamation points!

So much talking in this chapter. I don't even know where to start honestly. I'm not super enthused with how this chapter turned out.

Relationship stuff - Neither of them has really had any experience in a reasonable relationship before. Naruto's are all tempered by the fact that he's a pariah in the village and Anko's by the fact that she finds it hard to trust people (read: one night stands, only same gender friends, and extremely short lived romantic relationships).

I don't like how the lemon turned out, so I'm probably only going to imply them from now on.

Matatabi isn't fully powered, she isn't going to be army killing people.


	12. Incidentals

Disclaimed

A/N: It seems like I've been saying every chapter lately has been annoying to write. Well, add this one to the list.

Note on last chapter: It seems I forgot to include a bunch of stuff about Yugito owing to the fugue state I was in when I was finishing it up. I'll have to go back and re-write the end, but essentially what I missed was as follows.

-The reason Naruto was in her head for so long was because he had to erase her encounter with the Konoha group and make up another reason for her to be Biju-less. He also spent a bit of time just looking for delicious sensitive state secrets. Short description: Naruto framed Orochimaru for it. His clone then left to drop her off somewhere near Lightning country to tie in the escape she thinks she made. Side note: the Sharingan is seriously hax. I mean only two (maybe three) people got to use Kotoamatsukami in canon, but holy crap.

Also, I think I'll be working on a different story, so I have no idea how this will affect the timing of the next chapter.

Oh, and it seems like you guys really like lemons, if my favorite and follows numbers are anything to go by, or it's because I broke 60k words. Eh, potato po-tot-o, so lemons will still be incorporated occasionally.

As always, thanks for all the favorites, follows, and reviews, you guys are my heroes.

Enjoy.

* * *

The blue skinned swordsman whipped around and brought his sword up. A dull thump sounded as he caught the Executioner's Blade aimed for his back. Bandages began to unwind as senbon impacted the sword. Something between a growl, gurgle, and grinding noise issued from the sword as the senbon struck deep.

"It's only right a swordsman faces another swordsman!" Zabuza yelled as he slashed again at the backpedaling fish person. Haku moved to bombard him from out of his reach.

"Naruto-san!" Mei called. He looked away fast enough to catch the last of the fish man's squad fall to the ground. The group from Konoha ran to catch up with the red haired woman. As Naruto passed the bodies of the defeated squad, he could see the kunoichi's Lava Release had robbed a few of the men of their faces.

Two minutes later they arrived at a desolate area of the battlefield. The corpses of either side were laid out in arcs around the solitary, standing figure. His staff spun, throwing droplets of blood off its surface. He was short and child-like with gray, messy hair. A scar ran down one side of his face. Mei brought a closed hand to her mouth and huffed. Globules of lava shot from her mouth toward Yagura. With a simple wave of his staff, water condensed and met the lava midair. Solidified chunks of it thudded into the ground as Ao and Mei rushed across the ground toward the Mizukage.

"I need a moment to prepare, go," he ordered. The two girls and Biju rushed in to help the aspiring Kage and her second in command. Even with his clone using the Nature chakra seal, he'd still had to expend a good amount of his personal chakra to make sure the shockwave technique worked. He'd read something about Sage chakra, and it seemed that even the brilliance of Uzumaki seals couldn't completely eliminate Nature chakra's special properties. So far, he hadn't had any clones self destruct in odd ways because he drew too much through the seal, but he and the clones all needed to have enough personal chakra to match what they were drawing; otherwise, it just didn't feel right, and jutsus began to act oddly. As far as he knew, the only benefit he gained from integrating it, other than the extra chakra, was he was slightly better physically and his jutsus were slightly more potent.

After the few minutes it took to center himself, Naruto looked up to see Yagura already engaging his Biju cloak. Matatabi's viciously clawed hand only passed close enough to shave him, but his condescension quickly turned to confusion as the chunk of cloak her hand passed through was missing. His confusion was short lived as a dragon made of fire bore down on him, and he was forced to mold the stream of water shooting from his mouth into a shield. Steam gathered and quickly cut off Naruto's line of sight.

A low powered Wind Release: Great Breakthrough streamed from his mouth and washed the field of fog and steam. Streaks, clashes, and jutsus and their counter covered the field, looking every bit like an angry wasp's nest attacking a predator. _Damn it_. There were too many people trying to get a piece of the Sanbi jinchuriki. "Everyone except Mei and Tabi, back off!" Ao, Anko, and Yugao jumped away from the conflict as twenty Naruto clones appeared. Fourteen clones landed lightly around the trio still doing battle. Bandages and paper seals flew from the wrists and hands of the clones.

"Water Release: Water Encampment Wall!" Yagura shouted as he brought a hand to his mouth, completely forgoing any hand seals. The torrent of water circled him like a vortex before shooting out and up, deflecting the projectiles. Balls of water flew out from inside the wall of water, _thwacking_ into six of his clones. All except two of his remaining clones launched into the same string of fifty-nine hand seals. More water bullets flew out from the center, but he couldn't have guessed that he had to take out specific ones to shut the jutsu off, and that Naruto had created two redundancies.

_Damn, I can't believe that actually worked_, Naruto thought as his clones shouted, "Four Post Chakra Sealing!" The box shaped barrier sprung up around the Mizukage, and parts of his one tailed cloak began to break off and float toward the shining, translucent walls. Before the chains could engage, Yagura sprouted two more tails, and suddenly ballooned in size. Rough, bone plating seemed to melt out from the chakra surrounding him. _Fuck._ "Everyone get back! He's going full Biju!" Naruto yelled as the growing shell pushed against the inside of his technique.

A bellowing scream rent the air, seemingly shattering the barrier surrounding the ever growing monster. Impossibly quickly, the Sanbi stood in its full glory before them. Thirty more clones appeared and rushed toward the Biju. More tags flew from their fingers as they tried the same tactic that had beaten Shukaku. It didn't seem that the Sanbi even made an effort to stop the tags; they impacted, activated, and exploded, taking chakra but leaving just a soot stain on the hard armor of the monster turtle.

Jutsus flew toward the Biju from all around Naruto as the other members of the assault group got back in on the action, as it was difficult to get in each other's way when the thing you were fighting was as big as a building. Three giant, armored, prehensile tails lashed out at the attackers as they closed. Naruto wished he'd invested more time in lightning jutsu; he was lacking in any elemental advantage, and it seemed like the majority of his comrades specialized in fire releases.

The Sanbi stomped, and the ground quaked under Naruto's feet. Trees shook, and the entire battlefield turned their heads toward the battle between the leaders of both sides. Twenty clones poofed into existence around Naruto and rushed toward the Biju's position. His first set of clones continued their barrage of paper seals before moving to the edge of the battlefield to take up holding positions. Oddly, the creature seemed to forgo any jutsu, simply trying to physically crush the people attacking it.

_He was supposed to have control over his Biju. What's his game?_ Naruto wondered. The second set of twenty clones made it under the gargantuan turtle, and leapt up to attach themselves to its underbelly with chakra. Wind chakra whipped around each of their hands as they thrust as deeply as they could into the relatively soft belly. Swirling blue balls appeared in each of their palms, but they quickly disappeared into the holes carved into the Sanbi's body. Skin bulged out as the Rasengans bored even deeper before exploding. Another bellow reverberated through the air, even shaking the moisture from the trees. Undeterred, a second volley of Rasengans shot into the enlarged holes on the underbelly.

Occasionally, his allies would be drawn out of the fight by a timely replacement from his clones sitting on the edge of the battlefield—he was pretty glad he'd remembered to tell them not to resist the tug. Unfortunately, his clones didn't get the same treatment as a cutting plane of water dispelled all the ones attached to the monster. The others had begun to hold back, they didn't have the reserves to constantly sling high level jutsu, so they were waiting for the most opportune moment. Naruto by the same token, even with his increased chakra control, was feeling the drain. He watched as the monster shuddered, shook, and stomped, but after an explosion of chakra from the holes, was completely back to normal.

Naruto grunted in frustration, _Yagura isn't doing anything! What the hell's going on? I really don't want to just slowly drain his chakra through injuries. Can I even seal it into something when it's technically a jinchuriki form? _He sighed. _Well, might as well test something out._ "Tabi! Come here!" Naruto ordered. The red haired woman landed in front of him within a few seconds. "Turn around and get ready to aim." She spun around to face the intermittent battle. He pressed his left hand against the middle of her back, and began flashing through forty-four one handed seals with his right. "Uzumaki Style: Biju Binding Chains," he intoned. Two ethereal white chains successfully sprouted from each of her wrists—that binding seal sure was handy.

"What do I do?"

"They respond to your will," he began to explain. "They can drain chakra and should be nearly unbreakable as long as you maintain them. I need you to target Tailed Beast Balls immediately, otherwise go nuts." With a quick nod, she jumped back into combat. _Have I really come far enough to almost completely ignore several people trying to kill a Biju only a few hundred feet away?_ It was a good thing that it was fairly difficult for something that large to focus on the miniscule forms of the ninja darting around them; it was also a good thing they weren't fighting in their own village, otherwise he'd have to worry about the collateral damage.

_**Give me control.**_

_Why?_ Another question popped easily into Naruto's mind: why was Kurama awake now of all times?

_**You don't know how to make a Tailed Beast Ball**_, Kurama tried to explain, but the anxious energy in his voice was obvious. _**You're working toward our deal. I have no reason to destroy us both.**_

Even though Tabi had tied up the tails with her chains, there was much more the Sanbi could do. Spheres of water formed out of the air and hung there temporarily, before streaking toward the ones attacking it. Was Yagura finally getting serious? The balls continued to form and rocket after allies with abandon. Yugao screamed as she was thrown from the fight, only avoiding crashing into the trees because of a quick replacement from one of his clones. Tornadoes of water scythed through anything in their paths as they rose from the ground. Anko and Mei narrowly avoiding death made the decision easy for him.

_Do it._

_**You're too sentimental**_, Kurama chided. _**It will get you killed one day.**_ Chakra bubbled up in Naruto, nearly making him giggle from its potency. His nails lengthened, his hair became spikier, and his eyes flashed red. A red chakra cloak formed with a single translucent tail swaying behind him. Two more quickly sprouted behind him as he gnashed his ever growing canines. The cloak seemed to solidify as the fourth tail appeared. Blackness covered his face while fluorescent white spread over his eyes and mouth.

* * *

All encompassing, throbbing pain awoke him. He cracked his eyes open to find his visible skin the angry red of a recently healed burn. As he focused on the pain, he could feel thin stretches burning even more than the rest of the skin. _The scars are going to act up every time I use Kurama's chakra now?_ Something under his head shifted, and he realized he was currently reclining on someone. Finally coming somewhere close to his normal awareness, he found that he was still on the battlefield, but couldn't hear any sounds of fighting.

"I see you're awake Naruto-sama," Tabi commented sardonically.

"Where are the others?" he asked, ignoring her tone.

"All of them are alive."

He didn't like the way she phrased that at all, "Injuries?"

"Uzuki-san has a few broken bones and bruised organs from the water bullet before you transformed." She hesitated, "Anko-san was injured during the battle with the loyalists after you defeated the Sanbi. She's in non-critical condition," Tabi added hastily.

"Why are we still out here?" Naruto asked as he moved to stand up. Pain blossomed anew, but only grunts escaped.

"I assumed you wouldn't want to burden the medics, so I kept guard over you here until you were ambulatory."

He nodded at her apparent thoughtfulness and said, "Let's go." As they were leaving, an odd thought popped into his head: _How does she know how Anko is doing if she's been here with me?_

Soon enough they were entering the medical grounds for the resistance. They slowed to a jog with Tabi in front.

After a minute of navigating through the tents she stopped in front of one and said, "Konoha's tent. Anko and Yugao are recovering inside." He shifted aside the flap and was assaulted by the scent of antiseptic. The inside of the tent was lit only by a lantern, but it was enough to discern that Yugao and Anko laid in cots on either wall. Noting, almost absently, that Yugao's breathing was steady and deep, he moved to stand next to Anko's cot.

She stirred before he could get a good look at her injuries and asked, "Ruto?"

"Sure am, Love," he replied, pulling a camp chair alongside her temporary bed and sitting down. "How're you doing?"

Quicker than he thought possible, she shot up and locked her arms around him. A sharp exhalation was the only thing that marked his injured state as she began blubbering into his chest, "It's over. Everything's over."

_What kind of painkillers did they put her on?_ "I need you to calm down, and tell me what happened, Love," he tried, soothingly. It failed spectacularly, but after a few minutes of emotional instability, she seemed to drift into unconsciousness. He set her down gently, but only as he was arranging her back into the bed did he discover her injury. Her left arm ended midway down her forearm. Somehow while he was unconscious she'd lost her hand. Blood pounded in his ears and his heart sped up rapidly. As he stood, a clone appeared to take over his seat. Bones popped and cracked audibly in his clenched fists.

There was no reason for it. Someone screwed up. On Anko. At the very least he was a sealing master, he could have done something if they'd only told him! Her career in the field was essentially over; she'd be relegated to a position in the village where her talents would be of the most use. Worst of all, her independence would be irrevocably broken. Only diminished temporarily for the most part, but it wouldn't feel like that. She would be miserable. He pressed his rage down, giving in could destroy the entire area.

He replaced the tent flap gingerly after exiting. "Did you see it?"

"Poisoned senbon in her hand. She was attempting to cover for the incompetence of the new Swordsman, Chojuro I believe," Tabi explained.

"Find the medic that did this, I'm go-"

"I don't think you'll have to go far," Tabi interrupted with a chin thrust behind him. He turned and a smile that only showed teeth took over his face. Walking toward him at the far end of the aisle were Mei, Ao, and the young swordsman.

"Medic," Naruto hissed as he began stalking toward the three person group. Ao immediately zeroed in on him due to his irregular gait. The tightly coiled rage in his belly burned cold, colder than he'd ever felt. Ice flowed through his veins, his scars burned, and his control snapped. Killer intent slammed down on the trio. He continued forward, wielding the total sum of malevolence of the Kyuubi and himself, toward a gasping Mei, an Ao who could only hold himself up on one knee, and a target on all fours desperately trying to breathe. Every step seemed to double the pressure; by the time his foot padded into the soft ground in front of them, they were all on the ground, and three foul tails swayed behind him. His hand closed tightly over the boy's pale blue hair. With a heave and a scream of pain, Chojuro was launched in the air back toward the battlefield.

Still wearing his smile, Naruto jumped after him at a dizzying speed. He landed on the decimated landscape, still sporting blood and body parts, just in time to see the wannabe Swordsman slam into the ground and continue to roll. A shunshin later and his cloaked, clawed hand was wrapped around the boy's throat. The turtleneck he was wearing offered him some protection from the Kyuubi's chakra, which was good. Naruto couldn't have him dying too quickly.

"Naruto-san!" Mei yelled as she and Ao finally caught up. Red eyes turned to take her in. "What are you doing?!"

Chojuro began to struggle against the grip around his throat. Naruto turned back to him and ordered, "Don't." Looking back at the rebel leader, he offered, "Because of his incompetence, Anko lost her hand."

"Grief doesn't give you the right to kill him."

"Doesn't it?" he wondered, tilting his head. "I was the channel for your alliance with Konoha. I facilitated the distribution of combat and non-combat supplies to Kiri. I killed Yagura." Naruto's grip tightened and his tails lashed around violently. "And what do I get for helping you? Your fool causes the woman I love to lose a limb and her career," he calmly explained.

"She's alive, she'll recover," Mei hedged.

"Oh? That simple is it?" he wondered. "She should be thankful that Chojuro here," he gave the boy a shake, "only caused her to lose a hand instead of her life?" Naruto chuckled, "What are you doing? You're acting like it's a minor inconvenience. Your soothing and negotiating could use some work, because I don't know if you understand the state I'm in."

"We can make it right," she promised.

Naruto's chuckle broke in a mad cackle, "Pitiful. How will you..." he trailed off as an idea took root. "No, you may be right. The medic's life is in my hands, non-negotiable. An arm is what I need for Chojuro's life."

"What do you mean?"

"Bodies are missing," Naruto observed as he casually tossed the boy toward the soon to be Mizukage. Ao let out an _oomph_ as he caught the Swordsman and lowered him to the ground. "But both sides still have bodies present. You've gathered the bloodline user's corpses." It was easy to see where bodies had been taken, especially where fire techniques were used. The chakra cloak faded and he struggled to remain upright. "Show them to me." Pain hammered into him—using the amount of chakra he had in the last two days and then all the chakra and transformations from Kurama had, predictably, worn down his body.

Despite the pain, he walked to the nearest kunoichi body that seemed to be around Anko's height. He was able to lift her arm, meaning the body hadn't started to rot. Wind chakra coated his other hand, and with a quick slash, the arm came away at the shoulder. Unrolling a scroll, he set the arm down in the middle of it. A small cloud of smoke appeared, and the arm was gone.

"Ao, take Chojuro to the medics. Naruto-san, please follow me," Mei ordered. He walked up alongside her as the group broke apart in different directions. "This isn't the end of this, Naruto-san."

"No? He should have never been in the field."

"Injury and death are synonymous with battle."

"You're treading dangerously close to my berserk button, Mei-chan," Naruto informed with a smile that held no warmth. "There's a difference. Chojuro created the injury because he wasn't properly trained. This was preventable but ignored." Naruto had sensed some ineptitude when they'd first met, but Tabi had apparently been dead on, as Mei hadn't tried to refute any claims of inadequacy.

"Don't threaten me when you're on your last legs Naruto-san."

"My condition has no bearing on it. The Kyuubi and I are on good terms, and he doesn't hate Anko. If I wanted to, I could release him in full force."

"This isn't a very good first experience for our alliance, Naruto-san," she pointed out tersely.

"Admitting mistakes isn't a weakness. Having him on anything other than guard duty was a tactical mistake. I'm sure others have suffered trying to keep your pet Swordsman alive." He sighed. Kurama's chakra made him hyper aware of his negative emotion, but it was slowly draining. Did he regret thrashing the boy? No. Could he have gone about it better? Probably. Would he have killed him? An unequivocal yes, but he had proved a good bargaining chip for helping her recover. One of the things on his to do list was to become less sensitive about Anko, but it was difficult. "Maybe now he'll actually take his training seriously."

After a few minutes of silence, she said, "I'm sorry."

"Your Swordsman managed to hit on the one thing that inspires my cruelty and anger, but I'm not the one you should be apologizing to. However, I apologize for the trouble this will cause you."

Ten minutes later they entered a tent dominated by closed, standing cupboards. The guards warily moved outside at her command.

"I need body based bloodlines," he informed as she touched the junction between the doors of a specific cupboard. A seal lit up and the doors popped open. The inside was a honeycomb of shelving, each cubby holding a single scroll.

After a moment's searching, she pulled out two scrolls, and offered them to him. "A female of the Kaguya, wielders of the Dead Bone Pulse, and a male of the Shigehito, wielders of the Corrosive Fist."

"I'll have their bodies back to you, minus an arm, by tomorrow," he assured her as he took the scrolls. "Thank you, Mei-chan," the warmth finally flowed back into his voice. "For what it's worth, I still quite like you," his voice seemed to echo in the tent as he disappeared in a shunshin.

He stopped in front of Konoha's medical tent as nine clones appeared in front of him. Handing over the three scrolls, he ordered, "Two per arm for prepping, the other three should create the common arrays. After that, three per arm for oversight. Got it?"

"Uh, yeah. We knew that as soon as you made us, Boss," one of the clones pointed out.

"Whatever, hurry." The clones left quickly to set up his mobile lab. Inside the tent he found Tabi waiting with his clone and the two unconscious kunoichi.

"I could not find the medic. It is a mess out here," she informed. "We will have to wait until she wakes up."

"Can you stay awake in case they try something?" She nodded, and he moved the single unoccupied cot next to Anko's. A scant minute later, Naruto fell into the first real sleep he'd gotten in the last couple days.

* * *

It seemed only a few seconds later that he was awoken by a hand shaking his.

"Ruto," came the dry voice of Anko. The hand gave his a gentle squeeze.

"Hey, Love," he greeted after turning toward her.

"Why are you here? Are you okay?"

Naruto snorted, "I was going to ask you the same thing. I'm just tired, but you're decidedly more lucid than the last time I spoke to you." A clone appeared next to their cots. It sped through a hand seals before stomping its foot on the ground. Briefly, a shimmering curtain of chakra encased them before disappearing. "No one can hear us, Love. Say what you will."

"I sense a lot of hand puns in my future," she chuckled awkwardly. After a pause, she said, "I'm sorry. You must have been worried."

"I was, but let me tell you something. This changes nothing," he assured her as confidently as he could. "You're still you, you still have value, I still love you and find you beautiful, and I'm already working on a solution." All of it was true. The only part he'd glossed over was the guilt nagging in the back of his head. If he'd handled Yagura better, he wouldn't have had to transform, he wouldn't have passed out, and he would have been there to make sure she wasn't hurt. Objectively, he knew that those thoughts could only lead to emotional pain, and that Anko would kick his ass if she heard him talk about needing to be around to protect her all the time.

"Everything must be alright if you're already spouting shit like that," she commented with her usual faux-derision. "A solution?"

"Special surprise in a few days."

She murmured appreciatively, but was suddenly straddling him. "Let's fuck." He looked up into her eyes. Something different filled them, desperation? What did she want? Physically asserting what he said before? Comfort from returning to something familiar and routine? Stress relief? The confusion and pain behind that sea of desperation was something he couldn't bear, but it was also something that he had no idea how to fix.

"Can't say no to you, Love."

* * *

A few days later, they entered his mobile lab to find the last batch of clones working on the finishing touches of Anko's present. Each wall other than the one with the flap had a table set against it. Three clones worked furiously at each table.

Naruto gestured to the two chairs sitting in the middle of the tables, "Take a seat, Ko-chan." They sat down across from each other, the chair legs sinking slightly in the damp ground. "I need to see it, Love," he said with a hand extended, palm up. Hesitantly, the bandages fell from the remainder of her left arm. He grabbed her forearm just below the elbow gingerly; she didn't resist as he extended her stump toward his face. _At least they did a decent job capping it_, he thought as he looked at the relatively scarless skin. She fidgeted a little in his grip, and he quirked an eyebrow.

"What?" she demanded.

"My, my, I didn't know you had such a nervous personality, Ko-chan," he teased. Her cheeks reddened, but he headed off her tirade by planting a quick kiss at the end of her stump. "I imagine it's still tender, so all this writing might feel a little annoying. Worth it though," he grinned as he took out his sealing stick. She remained silent as he began the arrays she'd need. "Not going to ask what you're getting?"

"I trust you."

Three hours later, densely packed black ink covered her entire arm all the way up to her shoulder.

"Ready?"

"Finally, yes!" she exclaimed.

"Focus your chakra on the main sealing array." The seals glowed blue and condensed into three, numbered spirals making up the points of an equilateral triangle at the cap of her arm. "Regular first."

* * *

A month passed as they helped the rebels stabilize Kiri. After a week of sitting around the medical tents, the Konoha group had returned to their temporary base in Uzushio. Their relations hadn't suffered for Naruto's outburst and demands. In fact, Chojuro had showed up on their departure, along with Zabuza and Haku, to apologize for his part in Anko's injury and to thank Naruto for his mercy. Anko had sent a questioning glance his way that he just deflected with a sheepish grin. The remaining three weeks had focused on Anko's rehabilitation, and his slow digestion of the Vault—unfortunately, he was only around a quarter complete when Tsunade ordered them to return.

They walked through the gates of Konoha, and Naruto said, "I don't need you all to report to the Hokage. You can head on home if you want." Hana, Shikamaru, and Yugao nodded before splitting off; he was left with Anko and Tabi. How would he explain her reasonably?

He hadn't come up with a good excuse by the time he stopped in front of her desk and said, "Yo."

"Report."

He spent over half an hour giving her a brief overview of their two months and change outside of the village. Other than extremely downplaying the Vault and omitting his outburst, he even mostly told her the truth.

"I'll need the full report within a week, and you've got two weeks leave," Tsunade said.

"Tsu-chan, what's wrong?" Naruto wondered. She'd been incredibly terse for the entire visit, and it seemed like she could barely keep from glaring.

"It's something we need to talk about alone, Naruto."

"Tabi-chan, please wait outside." He didn't even turn around, but the click of the door opening and closing confirmed her exit. "What is it?"

"When's the last time you _saw_ Kurenai?"

He titled his head confusedly, "A little more than a week before I left, why?" Was she really that mad they hadn't had sex that recently before he left?

"You may want to sit down," Tsunade informed him, sympathy evident in her voice. He took a seat, but his mind was working a mile a minute trying to figure out what kind of horrible news she'd have to present to make him fall in shock. "She came into the hospital complaining of some things, and once I found out what it was, I ran a few tests to confirm it." The blond Hokage took a deep breath, "She's three months pregnant, Naruto. The child is yours."

Finally, after a minute of facial contortions, Naruto asked, "What?"

"So, this wasn't planned?"

"No..." He was silent for a moment. "Are you sure it's me? I watched her do the contraception jutsu..." Naruto's voice was quiet and he couldn't seem to keep on one track for long. The sheer amount and speed of the thoughts flying around in his head were preventing him from focusing on anything.

"Shizune did her examination. She apparently had seemed hopeful rather than distressed with her symptoms," the Hokage let it hang there, but Naruto's mind took it to its logical conclusion. _Kurenai_ had been planning it. Apparently, she'd forgotten to inform him though. Was that the whole reason for their meetings all along? Being a genjutsu practitioner was obviously handy in collecting sperm unwittingly, or so he assumed, since he'd seen her perform the contraception. Why him? After that question, the line his mind took was harrowing and unfortunate; it caused him to turn his head to look at Anko.

"Did you know?" he questioned evenly.

"No," Anko said simply.

Turning back to Tsunade, he asked, "I assume you didn't know until we were out of the village?" The other blond nodded. "Thanks, Tsu-chan. I'll talk to you later," Naruto said numbly as he walked out of the office.

* * *

A/N the Latter: So... Yeah, some shit went down. Anko got a sweet set of robot hands, Naruto's apparently going to be a father, Kiri is pacified for the moment.

You may notice that there a lot of loose ends after the Biju fight. This was intentional, as pretty much all of Naruto's attention was devoted to Anko. Everything else registered as something like an afterthought. Things will begin to come to a close slowly as he remembers things that didn't add up and seem like things he shouldn't ignore.

This story has kind of turned into a character study rather than something full of delicious action. That makes me sad because the POV I'm writing from doesn't really let Anko show her awesomeness too often, and I dislike her as the damsel that Naruto always needs to save.

We'll learn more about what Naruto did with Anko's artificial hands next chapter. I assumed you guys could guess at their functions for the most part, so I didn't want a big info dump right there.


End file.
